she fought “pettier” ones—but pur-
pose clarifies itself, and her courage
to speak out is innate. “I was born into a
political family. My father was fighting
for what he believed in,” says Nyong’o.
“I think it was really just instilled in
me that there are things in this world
that are worth changing—part of living
is about trying to transform the world
into, you know...the world that we want
to be a part of.”
F
or every project she takes on,
Nyong’o relies on gut instinct
to guide her. “As I prepare, I
have to articulate to myself why I’m
doing this. The secondary thing is defi-
nitely the people,” she says. “When I
choose projects, I want to have faith that
as an artist it will speak to a time when it
is needed as much as it speaks to me at
the time that I make it.”
“I really understood this with Black
Panther, when we were making that
movie in such a different political cli-
mate than the one in which it came
out,” says Nyong’o. Ryan Coogler and Joe
Robert Cole wrote the film while Obama
was still president, but it came out one
year into Trump. “Ryan was speaking to
a future relevance that he could not have
predicted.” Nyong’o signed on to the
project on the strength of Coogler’s pitch
alone, before a script existed. “Marvel
won’t give you the script. Marvel won’t
give you the scripts!” she emphasizes. “I
read the script for the first time six weeks
before we started shooting.”
Black Panther, which grossed $1.347
billion in box offices across the globe,
exploded conventional Hollywood’s
(which is to say, white) notions of what
an all-Black film could do commercially.
More than that, “In Black Panther, I felt
that the African experience was allowed
to exist aspirationally,” says Nyong’o. “I
think it’s more common in America to
hear of the struggle of black people than
it is to hear of the success. It’s more of
a sensation to have a headline about a
struggle, you know? ‘Lupita Shunned
by People for Her Hair Texture.’ The
struggle through having dark skin is
clickbait. So when Black Panther came
along...it was so refreshing to work on an
African narrative that did not lead with
the struggle of being African.”
Nyong’o has said her gut led her to
take the role of Miss Caroline in this
year’s Little Monsters, a quirky indie