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Lupita Nyong'o Says Quiet Place Cancer Storyline Was 'Therapeutic' After Losing Chadwick Boseman

Lupita Nyong'o tells PEOPLE why it was 'very therapeutic' to play a character with terminal cancer in 'A Quiet Place: Day One' after the death of her friend and 'Black Panther' costar Chadwick Boseman.

In the new sci-fi thriller, the Oscar winner, 41, portrays Sam, a poet fighting for her life in more ways than one: against terminal cancer and an invasion of aliens that hunt based on sound. She begins the film in hospice care with other patients and her cat named Frodo, eventually finding herself trapped in Manhattan and having to stay silent to avoid the lethal creatures. Nyong'o tells PEOPLE it was "scary to have to go there" in a role where her character "is really facing their mortality, even before this apocalypse takes place, and whose life is slipping between her fingers."

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