In the film, Quvenzhané has an ear-splitting scream that completely expresses her frustration at the difficult world she lives in, and after her father tells her that her mother “swam away,” she screams for her mother to return. No one will ever forget the power of that scream.

“I’m mostly a girl so I really do these things but I scream and that came to me and I’ve been doing that since I was a little girl,” she said, “and I would always scream for my brother so the other team can lose. That’s not very girlie but it’s something that I know how to do and always did.”

“Did they know about that when they put you in the movie?”

“No. Well, the first day, the audition, I didn’t tell them at all. So when I got the audition and I first got to the set, I did it. So they didn’t even know about it. Right in the middle or in the beginning or something. They didn’t even know about it; they were kinda surprised.”

“What did they say?”

“They said, ‘WOW, YOU ARE VERY LOUD!’ And I was just like, ‘I know, that’s why I didn’t do it.’ And when they came to the scene where I had to burp, I had to secretly act like I drank some water and I burped and then they asked me, ‘how did you burp?’ And I said, ‘cause I know how to do it on command,’ and they said, ‘do it,’ so you know? I burped and they was like, ‘WOW, you should have told us before.’ So it was really funny to see them react to what I did and they didn’t even know about it.”

“They learned more about you every day.”

“Thank you. Anybody calls for Quvenzhané, I know they’re calling me, cause that’s one of a kind.”