Stars of the forthcoming sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Letitia Wright and Tenoch Huerta may be presumed enemies in the film, but according to the actors, their respective characters (Shuri and Namor) may be more alike than we think.
“They share a wound. They share grief. How they solve [it], what they do with this pain is different. But at the end, they share this,” Huerta explained to The Root during a press junket ahead of the film’s release. “Even the kingdoms, Wakanda, Talocan, is like sparkling water. It’s funny, joyful, full of life, and they have to protect their kingdoms. They have to protect their people. And for me, it’s like a parallel journey; like a mirror, a road. In the end, they decide to take different paths. But it’s beautiful. I love this relationship that we carried with these characters and with this journey.”
And while the notion of seeing the kingdom of Wakanda go head-to-head with another may seem like a shoo-in to get audiences excited to see the film, Wright admitted that there’s still some anxiety in anticipation of seeing how fans will react.
“It is that need to make it as good as the first. Or to just—not to compare it—but to just give you something meaningful,” Wright said. “You definitely feel that pressure. It is kind of like sparkling water where you feel all the bubbles coming up of anxieties but once it settles and calms down, it just smooths out. So we’re hoping that all our excitement that’s coming up like those little bubbles in the sparkling water and we’re a little bit anxious about how people feel as that can is opened up and we see the film, just starts to settle and we share in it.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, starring Wright, Huerta, Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Michaela Coel, Dominique Thorne, Martin Freeman, hits theaters on Nov. 11.