Lupita in Lagos: The rise and rise of Lupita Nyong'o, Africa's drama diadem

Ever since Lupita Nyong’o burst onto the scene in 2013 with her star-making role in 12 Years a Slave, she’s proven herself to be a force in the worlds of film and fashion alike. The international filmmaker and actress has become a trailblazer for other aspiring African actresses, and a majestic fashion icon, with red-carpet appearances and pictures in publications like InStyle, Vogue, W, and many others. 

The Mexico City–born beauty who grew up in Kenya, where her father served as a government minister and a senator, attended Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, and, while still a student, served as a production assistant and an intern on several movies, and earned a degree in film in 2003.

Having taken to drama and obtaining the lead role in a production of Romeo and Juliet, Lupita returned to Mexico during her teens to learn Spanish. Upon her return to Kenya during school summer vacation, she discovered that filming for the drama ‘The Constant Gardener’ was happening in her area. She joined the set as a production assistant and met Ralph Fiennes, who told her to become an actor only if it was something she couldn’t imagine doing without.

In 2007 she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in film and African studies, and honed her craft as a filmmaker by directing, editing and producing her Senior Thesis, a 2009 albinism documentary: In My Genes, which followed the stories of several Kenyans who are living with albinism. She then became a star of Kenyan television in Shuga, an MTV/UNICEF-backed series that looked at sexual relationships among youth in Nairobi, aiming to promote HIV awareness and safe sex via storytelling. The film, In My Genes (2009) was featured at the 2010 New York African Film Festival.

Weeks before graduating from the Yale School of Drama, where she earned a master’s degree in acting (2012), Lupita found out that she had landed a part in director Steve McQueen’s drama 12 Years a Slave, and upon graduation, Lupita appeared in her first feature film, 12 Years a Slave in 2013. Her subtly anguished portrayal of Patsey, a young slave woman who is repeatedly raped by her owner (played by Michael Fassbender) and denigrated by his wife (Sarah Paulson), earned her a slew of award nominations, before taking home the 2014 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film, which was directed by Steve McQueen, was named Best Picture. The following year, she starred in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the Off-Broadway play Eclipsed. The actress also featured prominently in the buzz-worthy superhero project, Black Panther (2018). A film that broke barriers for racial representation and box office records.

“Thank you to the Academy for this incredible recognition. It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s. And so I want to salute the spirit of Patsey for her guidance. And for Solomon, thank you for telling her story and your own. “

Later that summer, the actress was honored with induction into Hollywood’s Walk of Fame class of 2019.

A trailblazer for other aspiring African actresses, Lupita’s intent to represent Africa continues on. 

As she tells RSNG in an interview,

“I am very outspoken because I am so proud of Africa, and I should be. I know there is still a long way to go, but as an African actress I have to make sure people of all backgrounds are represented in an industry that is, at times, very happy to ignore them.’

‘When I did Queen of Katwe, it dawned on me how very rare it was to have a story like that on the African continent, and having a stage as international as Disney, to be told on this scale, about Africans told by Africans.’

‘We’ve all watched many movies which depict Africa in a negative light whether it be through famine, war, disease, corruption and political strife, or you see it used as a background and frame and used as a foreign perspective.’

‘And this is a testament to my own life, where I had my dreams and I was able to realize them and have it go so well, it’s a reflection on that. And it’s a relatable, identifiable story for anyone who has a dream. Anywhere in the world. That what makes it so great, it applies to everyone.”

The Oscar-winning Kenyan actress continues to use her platform in Hollywood to tell African stories. Not only has she brought in a new dimension to on-screen representation, Lupita also gets to create the kind of roles she’d like to play. 

Remember that in 2014, fresh off her Oscar buzz, Nyong’o optioned the rights to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah. The story of two Nigerian immigrants parallel lives in the UK and US.

In 2015, she headlined the Broadway play ‘Eclipsed’. Written by her Black Panther co-star Zimbabwean-American Danai Gurira, directed by South African-born Liesl Tommy and starring an all-female cast, the play told the story of the captive wives of a Liberian rebel soldier. Her first major staring role after Twelve Years a Slave was Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, the story of a Ugandan chess prodigy.

Of course, blockbusters like Star Wars and The Jungle Book kept the lights on and her star bright, and the film Black Panther came along. 

Lupita Nyong’o went on to a co-starring role in the comedy-horror Little Monsters, which premiered at Sundance in early 2019. She followed with a turn to scream-out-loud horror in Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’, about a family confronted by a sinister group of doppelgängers. With that she won her NAACP award for Best Actress, just yesterday, the 23rd of February, 2020. 

The highly intelligent and articulate Lupita, remains on course to be Hollywood’s next—and first African—super-producer. Her inclusion of African audiences goes beyond Black Panther’s early premiere in her home province of Kisumu. And these have all been deliberate choices of an actress who seems determined to be a storyteller as much as a performer.

When she told every child their dreams were valid, she meant it.