Featured Image Credit: JB Lacroix/WireImage
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Racism, Entertainment, US News
Maxine Harrison
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Racism, Entertainment, US News
Lupita Nyong’o got her first breakout role in the Hollywood film 12 Years A Slave, which was released in 2013.
Now, the Oscar award-winning actor shares why she turns down slave role movies for an important reason.
Nyong’o won her first Academy Award for the very first Hollywood film that she had acted in 12 Years A Slave.
Speaking in an interview about the film and the award, the Kenyan actor says: “It really did set the pace for everything I’ve done since.”
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In the interview with Inside Africa, the 42-year-old explained that after the lead role in the movie, she would have expected to get offers for other lead roles, but instead she was typecasted with role offers of more slave roles after winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Sadly, this is something many Black actors can relate to - being typecasted for race trauma-based roles.
“After I’d won that Academy award, you’d would think oh I’m going to get lead roles here and there.
“'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 of the kind of offers I was getting in the months after winning my Academy Award.”
Black actors have long voiced concerns about being typecasted into roles that negatively perpetuate stereotypes. In an interview with GQ in 2021, actor Will Smith said: “I’ve always avoided making films about slavery.” He continues: “I didn’t want to show Black people in that light. I wanted to be a superhero.”
Emancipation is the first and only movie he has done around slavery in 2022 out of his lengthy career.
She explained that the experience also led to think pieces about whether it was the end of her career following the movie.
“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.”
Explaining why she no longer accepts slave roles, she says: “I like to be a joyful warrior for changing the paradigms of what it means to be African. And if that means I work one job less a year to ensure I’m not perpetuating the stereotypes that are expected of people from my continent then let me do that.”
Now an accomplished actor, Nyong’o has played roles in a myriad of films including Marvel’s Black Panther, Star Wars The Force Awakens and more films across various genres.
Nyong’o was born in Mexico but raised in Kenya where her heritage is from.
She has US, Mexican and Kenyan citizenship which alone reflects the myraid of experiences she has in her life.