Lupita Nyong’o received many offers to play a slave after winning an Oscar.
The 42-year-old won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her breakthrough performance as Patsey in the 2013 film. 12 years a slave and although she hoped her success would bring her new leading roles, she was shocked to be offered similar roles.
Speaking on CNN in Africashe said: “It really set the tone for everything I’ve done since.”
“But you know, what’s interesting is, after you win that Oscar, you would think, ‘Oh, I’m going to get lead roles here and there,'” she revealed.
THE Black Panther the actress added: ” [Instead, it was]’Oh, Lupita, we’d like you to star in another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship.’ These are the kinds of offers I received in the months following my Oscar.
Lupita also noted that it was a “very tender time” and that she had to ignore media coverage of her Hollywood trajectory.
She said: “There have been thoughts about: ‘Is this the beginning and end of this dark-skinned black African woman’s career?’ I must have made myself deaf to all these pontificators because at the end of the day, I am not a theory; I am a real person.
Lupita Nyong’o – whose parents are Kenyan – is willing to work less if it means she doesn’t “perpetuate stereotypes” of Africans.
“I like to be a happy warrior to change the paradigms of what it means to be African, and if that means I work one less job a year to make sure I don’t perpetuate the stereotypes that are expected of people from my continent, then let me do it,” she concluded.
