“Black Panther” star Lupita Nyong’o says it was a challenge to play Roz — a friendly robot who gets shipwrecked on an island and ends up raising an orphaned gosling without basic parenting tools — in “The Wild Robot.”

“My main mission was to be true to the character,” said Nyong’o at a screening of the film this month in Atlanta. “She’s a robot who doesn’t have feelings. As a person, I feel a lot of things. I had to make sure her vocabulary was logic first. She happens upon emotion. She doesn’t understand it.”

Chris Sanders, the film’s director who previously worked on “Lilo & Stitch” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” chose Nyong’o as Roz, he said, because he liked the warmth in her voice.

But Roz opens the film with no human contact and in “factory settings,” so Nyong’o wanted her to first sound a bit like Alexa or Siri.

“What makes Roz resonate is, she’s this sophisticated robot who is representative of adulthood, but she has the innocence of a child,” she said in a later interview. “She is brand-new to this environment. She learns how to be a mother and makes mistakes that real human beings make. It’s this pure journey of her being more than she was meant to be.”

Nyong’o said the film takes its cues from “The Wild Robot” series of Peter Brown children books. “They are so full of imagination and heart,” she said. “I love the story of kindness being a superpower.”

Unlike a live-action movie, she said, she would jump all over the script any given day she was recording Roz’s voice. She had to be cognizant where Roz was in the movie so she could shift her voice to give her more human texture as she matured.

“It was a technical feat to keep Roz’s evolution in mind,” she said. “I wanted that reflected in the vocal performance. Chris gave me leeway to give notes and help with her evolution and transformation. I felt so empowered. I felt like a real part of it, not just an executor.”

“The Wild Robot” — which is now playing in theaters and received strong advance buzz with a 98% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating from critics — could become the biggest animated film opening in September, potentially beating 2016’s “Hotel Transylvania 2,” which opened at $48.4 million. It’s also one of the few major animated releases in 2024 that is not a sequel.

“So much work goes into animation,” Nyong’o said. “There are so many intricate pieces. I’m happy for the animators who spent so many waking hours on this. I’d come in here and there over two and a half years, do my thing and they’d work magic with it. This is a showcase of great animation and sound design.”

Sept. 30 birthdays: Actor Angie Dickinson is 93. Singer Cissy Houston is 91. Singer Johnny Mathis is 89. Actor Barry Williams is 70. Actor Fran Drescher is 67. Actor Eric Stoltz is 63. Singer Eddie Montgomery is 61. Musician Trey Anastasio is 60. Actor Tony Hale is 54. Actor Jenna Elfman is 53. Actor Lacey Chabert is 42. Rapper T-Pain is 40.