Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o says she turned down several roles after her 2014 Academy Award because Hollywood kept offering her more slave characters. Speaking on CNN’s Inside Africa, she explained how her early success brought pressure and expectations she didn’t want to feed into.
“The Offers Were All Slave Roles”
Lupita won Best Supporting Actress for her debut film 12 Years a Slave in 2014. Instead of opening doors to diverse lead roles, she said Hollywood came back with more of the same.
“After I won the Academy Award, you’d think, ‘Oh, I’m going to get lead roles,’” she said. “But it was, ‘Lupita, we’d like you to do another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship.’”
The Kenyan-Mexican star said it was shocking to see how limited the opportunities were, especially after such a major career milestone.
Breaking Stereotypes as a Dark-Skinned African Woman
Lupita said winning the Oscar so early in her career “set the pace” for everything that followed, but not always in positive ways. She faced heavy scrutiny and “think pieces” questioning whether her career would rise or fall.
“There was an expectation for me and my career,” she said. “There were think pieces asking if this was the beginning or the end of a dark-skinned Black woman’s career.”
She said she had to block out those voices: “I had to deafen myself to all those pontificators because I am not a theory. I am an actual person.”
Lupita added that she was willing to take fewer jobs if it meant avoiding stereotypes. “If that means I work one less job a year to make sure I’m not perpetuating these ideas about Africans, then let me do that.”
A Career Built on Choice, Not Pressure
Her decision paid off. After rejecting the roles she found limiting, Lupita went on to star in Non-Stop, Disney’s The Jungle Book, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and Queen of Katwe.
One of her most celebrated roles came in Black Panther, where she played Nakia alongside the late Chadwick Boseman. Lupita said she and co-star Danai Gurira were intentional about portraying African women as complex, powerful, and fully human.
“The women I know are deep, complex, and about more than just the man in their lives,” she said. “Strength doesn’t mean a lack of vulnerability. It means you have what it takes to get through things—and to seek help when you need it.”
A Decade After Her Oscar, Lupita Still Chooses Her Own Path
More than ten years after winning her first Oscar, Lupita says her mission remains the same: to choose roles that reflect the depth and dignity of African women.
“I like to be a joyful warrior for changing the paradigms of what it means to be African,” she said.