Lupita Nyong’o won an Oscar for the first time in 2014 12 years slave, in which she plays Patsey, an enslaved African-American woman.
But against her expectations were the offers she received for roles similar to the ones she played in the 2013 film.
“It really set the tone for everything I’ve done since,” she says CNN within Africa, and added, “But you know what’s interesting is that after I won that Academy Award, you’d think, ‘Oh, I’m getting leading roles here and there.’
But she acknowledges that Hollywood stereotyped her afterward A slave for 12 years. “[Instead, it was]”Oh, Lupita, we’d like you to do another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship.” Those are the kinds of offers I got in the months after I won my Academy Award.
That was tough, as Lupita remembers; at the time there were articles in the press: “There were think pieces about: ‘Is this the beginning and end of the career of this dark-skinned black African woman?’
‘I had to deafen myself to all those pontificators, because ultimately I am not a theory; I am a real person.”
In the meantime, Lupita will star in the upcoming film Lunik Heist.
