Lupita Nyong’o stood her ground.
Over a decade after earning Best Supporting Actress at the 2014 Oscars for her debut role in 12 Years a Slave, Lupita shared insight into her decision to turn down future roles.
“My winning an Academy Award came at the very start of my career,” she told Angélique Kidjo in a Nov. 22 CNN Inside Africa interview. “It was for the very first film that I had done. It really did set the paces for everything I’ve done since.”
“But you know what’s interesting is that, after I won that Academy Award, you’d think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna get lead roles here and there,'” she continued. Instead, she was told, “‘Oh, Lupita, we’d like you to play another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship.'”
Indeed, after earning the golden statuette for her role as Patsey in the Steve McQueen-directed film, the Kenyan-Mexican actress was shocked by the opportunities that came her way.
“It was a very tender time,” the Us star reflected. “There is an expectation for you and your career. There were think pieces about, ‘Is this the beginning or the end of this African woman’s career?'”
“I had to deafen myself to all those pontificators because at the end of the day, I am not a theory,” she continued. “I am an actual person. I like to be a joyful warrior for changing the paradigms of what it means to be African.”
So, Lupita was willing to stand by her values rather than join any projects she didn’t feel right about.
“If that means I work one less job a year to ensure that I am not perpetuating these stereotypes that are expected of people from my continent,” she explained, “then let me do that.”
And her decision proved fruitful, with the actress starring in the Liam Neeson-led film Non-Stop, as well as the Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Jungle Book and Queen of Katwe in the next two years.
Among her most prolific roles, however, was opposite the late Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther, where she played warrior—and T’Challa’s love interest—Nakia.
“When we’re dealing with African representation in story,” she told Mama Knows It All in a 2022 joint interview with costar Danai Gurira, “we feel such a strong sense of responsibility and desire, deep desire to see African women on screen that look and feel like we know them to be.”
“With these characters, we wanted them to be women that we know,” she continued. “The women that I know are complex and they’re deep and they’re about something other than just the man in their lives. I think that was really important to us to show women with agency and strength.”
And that also meant dissecting what those attributions meant for their characters.
“Strength does not mean an absence of vulnerability,” she added. “It means that you have it in yourself to get yourself through things, to seek help. Strength in itself is a very complex idea. It was important to us that the women come across as being full. That’s not hard if you commit to expressing humanity and not.”
