“The gesture of my style is definitely
my mom. I always thought she was very
elegant, and she was always present with
the way she put herself together without
being pressured,” says Nyong’o, citing
her mother’s ritual home manicure every
Sunday night while the family watched
television together. But she also looked
up to her Aunt Amondi, her mother’s
sister, whose style tacked in the oppo-
site direction: black leather jackets, a
mohawk at one point, even the motor-
cycle to complete the look. “I kind of
oscillated between the two. I find I love
the elegant, the classic, the simple, but I
also like the outrageous and the quirky
and the almost accidental.”
Nyong’o could almost be describing
her career, except for the accidental
part. The year started with the premiere
of Little Monsters, a comedic Australian-
American-British zombie flick, went
right into the smash success of Jordan
Peele’s horror drama Us, in which she
plays heroine Adelaide Wilson and her
demonic doppelgänger Red, and will
close out after she reprises her role as
CGI alien Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The
Rise of Skywalker. In between, the Oscar
winner will publish a children’s book,
Sulwe, and she’s thisclose to starting
shoots on a television series based on
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ameri-
canah, which she is producing, with
her Black Panther costar Danai Gurira
writing the script. So, Nyong’o radiates
the energy of a girl next door, especial-
ly as she recalls how she role-modeled
early fashion choices, but she also hap-
pens to be one of the most powerful Black
women in film.T
hough her family is from
Kenya’s Luo tribe, Lupita Amon-
di Nyong’o was born in Mexico
City in 1983. Her first name is derived
from the name Guadalupe—the Virgin
Mary. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o,
now a prominent Kenyan politician, and
mother, Dorothy Ogada Nyong’o, had
immigrated to Mexico shortly after
Charles Nyong’o, her father’s brother, was
disappeared in 1980. Charles was never
found; he was likely a target because of
his opposition to the Moi presidency. The
childhoods of Nyong’o and her five sib-
lings would be marked by political pres-
sures. They had to share their father with
the rest of the community for the good
of the fight, and lived in fear for his safe-
ty, particularly after the family returned
to Kenya in 1984.
Migration would become the norm
for the family, and home was a fraught
concept for Nyong’o, who would only
spend the first few months of her life in
Mexico City before the family moved to
New York City. When she was 16, her par-
ents sent her to Taxco, Mexico, to learn
Spanish at the Universidad Nacionalupita Nyong’o glides into the
restaurant at our appointed
time, the picture of cool in
a blue charmeuse jumpsuit with a
camel-colored rain jacket draped
over her arm. If diners are aware
a star is among us, they don’t betray
it. After briefly casting about for
a different table, then deciding the
one we’ve got will do, she jumps
directly, wholeheartedly, into the
interview, clothes first.
L
48 VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 2019