Scream Queen Lupita Nyong'o names A Beautiful Mind as the scariest movie on Hot Ones

Lupita Nyong’o is already an Academy Award-winning actor, but she’s carving a niche for herself as an all-time horror movie star. Many believe she was snubbed for her dual role in Us, and now she’s back for the prequel film A Quiet Place: Day One. But what makes a Scream Queen scream in real life? Hot wings, for one; Nyong’o weeps through the final rounds of Hot Ones. But the movie she cites as the scariest she’s ever seen is not one you’d expect.

“You know, the film that scared me most—it’s not even a horror film—but it’s A Beautiful Mind,” she admits. “Oh yeah. I watched that and I thought I was schizophrenic for at least two weeks. … ’Cause I really believed that he was a spy at the beginning of that movie. And so, when we learned that he was actually just sick in the mind, I felt like I was definitely, probably like him. ’Cause he was very convincing.”

Elsewhere, Nyong’o shares some trade secrets about horror movie acting, including how “exhausting” it can be. “You know, like, fear in real life, an adrenaline surge, is short. And the intention is not to stay there. You feel fear, you run away, you do something,” she shares. “But when you’re making a scary movie, you just have to keep inducing that. So [Joseph Quinn] and I would sometimes just huddle and hype each other up and get our hearts going. Kind of like athletes, is how we’d approach it when we were low on energy.”

Day One was particularly difficult because she had to share the screen with a cat (“I was very afraid of cats before I took this film and it was one of the things that was holding me back from saying yes”). Even more exhausting, one imagines, is the specific challenges of shooting Us. “The vocal posture was very difficult to get into so what I would do is at the beginning of the day, I would warm up and get into my vocal posture and then I would hold that all day,” she explains of the character Red. “It just so happened that me holding my vocal posture made everybody on set really nervous. And everybody would whisper around me, and everybody would avoid my eyes. And they would just be so awkward around me and it was so entertaining.”

Nyong’o remains valiant and victorious in the face of horror, including Da Bomb Beyond Insanity, which moves her to tears that are, frankly, cinematic. “I don’t know what emotions I’m feeling,” she says after making it through the final gauntlet. “I’m feeling heartbreak, and… euphoria. And a sense of pride. And a sense of shame that I would do this to myself. Maybe just joy, also.” When host Sean Evans proposes adding peace to the list, she cries, “Maybe later I’ll feel peace.”