Lupita Nyong'o: From Political Exile to Oscar to Marvel's 'Black Panther'
The actress — who has an Academy Award, beauty megadeals and two Disney franchises — opens up about her globe-trotting childhood, lingering insecurities and why she went public on Weinstein: "I couldn't sleep. I needed to get it out."
In August 2008, Lupita Nyong'o boarded a plane for her native Kenya. She was distraught. Five years after moving to America to become an undergraduate at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts — an experience she had endured rather than enjoyed — and weeks after leaving a nine-to-five office job that had left her feeling stifled and trapped, her dreams were crumbling. She was 25 years old and lost.
At home in Nairobi, where she'd lived since her family returned from political exile in the mid-'80s, she confided in her mother, her rock. Dorothy Nyong'o, then the head of her own PR company (and now the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation), suggested she read a book: Glen Allen McQuirk's Map for Life, a self-help tome written by a family friend.
By the end of that year, with the help of the book and her own resolve, Nyong'o had found a new objective, as improbable as her half-Mexican, half-Kenyan name. She scribbled down words she had never dared utter out loud: "I want to be an actor."
It was an astonishing leap for an East African woman embarking on a career in which she would be hindered by her accent, her skin color and even (for a newcomer) her relatively advanced age. But nearly a decade later, Nyong'o, 34, is the most famous African actress in the world, an Academy Award winner for her mesmerizing U.S. feature debut in 2013's 12 Years a Slave. She's hurdled past what she calls the "Oscar curse" and the terrors that inevitably followed it. "The fear of failure was just as high as the high of success," she notes, "because I could fall, and I could fall far."
She's a global star who has appeared in two Disney franchises (Star Wars and the new Marvel adaptation of Black Panther, which opens Feb. 16); she's a brand name in films from Queen of Katwe to The Jungle Book, a fashion icon whose image has appeared on four Vogue covers (the first black actress to do so), and who has a lucrative deal with Lancome — an ironic twist for a woman who acknowledges that, deep down, "There is a part of me that will always feel unattractive."
Sitting with her over a long coffee (in her case, mint tea) on a bitingly cold mid-January day in New York's Society Cafe, that notion seems absurd. One is taken by her natural poise, in her sleeveless cream dress, seashells decorating her braided hair. But it's her strength that's more striking. She's steely willed and outspoken, as was evidenced by her much-discussed Oct. 19 opinion piece in The New York Times about her encounters with Harvey Weinstein.
After recalling how the mogul invited her to a screening at his home, only to lead her into his bedroom and attempt to give her a massage, she described his words when they met again at a Tribeca restaurant. "Let's cut to the chase," he said. "I have a private room upstairs where we can have the rest of our meal." Nyong'o declined. "With all due respect," she replied, "I would not be able to sleep at night if I did what you are asking." She vowed never to work with him again.
Today, she won't go into the specifics of their dealings, but she's forthright about the moral compulsion that led to the article. "I felt uncomfortable in my silence, and I wanted to liberate myself from it and contribute to the discussion," she says. "That was just what I felt I needed to do, quite viscerally. I couldn't sleep. I needed to get it out." Over several days, she wrote and wrote, alone with her computer, then showed what she had crafted to her mother. "I had to talk to her about it because it was something that we hadn't talked about," she continues. "She was really moved and very supportive."
Now the actress is planning to take an active role in the Time's Up anti-harassment initiative and is weighing how she can best serve it. She's as vocal in its defense as she is on subjects from colonialism to colorism, the prejudice against dark skin that is the subject of a new children's book she's writing, Sulwe, which Simon & Schuster will publish next year. "Sulwe is a young Kenyan girl who, though her name means star [in Luo], her skin is the color of midnight," she says. "And she's uncomfortable because she's the darkest in her family and goes about trying to change that, then she has this adventure that leads her to accept herself." The book came out of a 2013 speech Nyong'o gave "about my journey to accepting myself and seeing beauty in my complexion."
As to her lingering doubts about her appearance: "That's OK," she says, with a sly smile, "because it will keep me grounded. I don't need to be so full of myself that I feel I am without flaw. I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time. I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities."
Given her candor, one suspects Nyong'o would be equally frank about politics, if it weren't for the danger to others. Her father, Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, is a prominent politician in Kenya and a leader in the opposition to its current president, Uhuru Kenyatta. "I am very emotional about politics," says his daughter after some hesitation, "in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate things in a rational fashion."
She knows that any words she utters will be put through the echo mill back home, which has recently been torn apart by a battle between competing presidential candidates and where her comments on behalf of her father's gubernatorial candidacy recently led to a backlash from his opponents. "She understands how politics works and how communities work," says Mira Nair, a longtime friend of the Nyong'os who directed her in Queen of Katwe. "It's part and parcel of her life."
Asked whether she is political, Nyong'o says: "I don't know. I had to share my father with politics for so long." She laughs. "I don't ever want to be president — let's just get that out of the way."
It's impossible to understand Nyong'o and her choices — including Black Panther — without understanding her origins. Peter Nyong'o, a member of the Luo tribe and longtime dissident, is now at the pinnacle of Kenya's political pyramid, but the road there has been painful for him and his family.
An intellectual who taught political science at the University of Nairobi, he was vehemently opposed to the authoritarian regime of Daniel arap Moi (president from 1978 to 2002), as was his brother, Charles Nyong'o. When Charles was murdered in 1980 — thrown off a ferry by thugs who were never identified — it sent a clear message. In 1981, Peter fled to Mexico, where he was joined the following year by his family as he taught political science in Mexico City. It was there that Lupita was born on March 1, 1983, the second of six siblings, and given her distinctive first name, a diminutive of Guadalupe.
While Dorothy Nyong'o returned to Kenya with her children shortly after Lupita's birth, Peter remained in exile (he worked briefly at the United Nations, then taught in Ethiopia) and did not rejoin his family until 1987, when his continued stance against Moi led to his detention on multiple occasions. "He's a political animal," says Dorothy. "He wanted change in the country, and I guess some people just have to take the risk to do what it takes to bring about the change. It wasn't easy."
Nyong'o has only a vague memory of that time while recognizing its impact on her family and — inevitably — herself. Her father believes this instability helped create her "chameleon" qualities; but, says Lupita, "when I was growing up, I wasn't aware of it. My parents wouldn't tell us what was going on when he was being jailed. They protected us from that — obviously for our own good, to try to keep a semblance of normalcy in a very abnormal situation, but also to ensure that we were not at risk. The more we knew, the more danger we would be in."
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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/f...cal-exile-oscar-marvels-black-panther-1077849
The design of the gown is quite similar to her Oscar gown: except with the addition of the jewellery around her shoulders and waist. She really does look beautiful
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