Lupita Nyong’o was flocked with offers to play a slave after winning an Oscar.
The 42-year-old star won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, for her breakthrough performance as Patsey in 2013’s 12 Years a Slave and while she hoped her success would bring about new lead roles, she was shocked to keep getting offered similar roles.
Speaking on CNN Inside Africa, she said: “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 revealed.
The Black Panther actress added, ” [Instead, it was], ‘Oh, Lupita, we’d like you to play another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship.’ Those are the kind of offers I was getting in the months after winning my Academy Award.”
Lupita also noted it was a “very tender time” and she had to ignore coverage about her Hollywood trajectory.
She said: “There were thinkpieces about: ‘Is this the beginning and end of this dark-skinned Black African woman’s career?’ I had to deafen myself to all those pontificators because, at the end of the day, I’m not a theory; I’m an actual person.”
Lupita Nyong’o – whose parents are Kenyan – is willing to work less if it means she isn’t “perpetuating stereotypes” of African people.
“I like to be a joyful warrior for changing the paradigms of what it means to be African, and if that means that I work one job less a year to ensure that I’m not perpetuating the stereotypes that are expected of people from my continent, then let me do that,” she concluded.
