Lupita Nyong’o was inundated with offers to play a slave after winning an Oscar.
The 42-year-old star won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, amongst other honours, 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 parts.
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.’
” [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.”
The Black Panther actress 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 – whose parents are Kenyan – is willing to work less if it means she isn’t “perpetuating stereotypes” of African people.
She said: “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.”
Lupita previously told how she feels like “administrative work” such as answering emails saps her “vitality” so she tries to make time for herself so she can be creative.
She told Harper’s Bazaar: “There’s so many demands on our lives today for me there’s a lot of administrative work, lots of emails to answer – dishes in the sink! All of that and it can take away a lot of my vitality.
“So for me, creativity is something that I have to safeguard, I have to make time for it, and I have to be very deliberate … Creativity comes to me in the shower.”
But the Us star still prioritises answering her emails thanks to advice she received from Reese Witherspoon.
She said: “The best piece of life advice I’ve received from another woman … This is very, very practical. Reese Witherspoon advised me to always be the first to answer group emails.
“And I think that’s great advice, because it means people will have to take you seriously as you’re quick to respond. I try.”
