horror-comedy. The magnet: Tay-
lor Swift’s “Shake It Off ” was in the
script. So Nyong’o taught herself to
play it on the ukulele, as director Abe
Forsythe imagined for the role. She
also immersed herself in the minutiae
of being a kindergarten teacher, right
down to creating lesson plans. “I love
deep-diving into a character I’m play-
ing,” says Nyong’o, emphasizing that
children posed a particular challenge.
“I would be so tired at the end of the
day working with these kids. They’re
unpredictable; they’ve got a lot of ener-
gy. It was a doozy. But I loved it. I loved
every moment of it.”
Like Forsythe, director Jordan Peele
wrote the mirroring characters of Ade-
laide and Red specifically for Nyong’o
in his thriller Us. Part of her immersive
prep work for that film was watching
a list of horror films recommended by
Peele. “They helped me and Jordan
establish a shared cinematic language
while shooting,” says Nyong’o. “Lupita
is a performer who is able to tap into
raw energy and raw emotion. She can
delve into some really dark places and
do so with complete emotional com-
mitment, as we saw in 12 Years a Slave.
And in Us, I knew she was going to
play characters that showed two sides
of this primal darkness: one bubbling
under the surface and the other bub-
bling over the surface,” says Peele, who
says Nyong’o has a “Hitchcockian” star
quality. “Lupita the star is distinctive
and incomparable: There’s only one of
her. So the notion of seeing two Lupitas
on screen at the same time would auto-
matically feel compelling—as well as
alien and unnatural.”
S
hortly after she wrapped
Black Panther, Nyong’o had
somewhat reluctantly begun
work on her first book, Sulwe, which
comes out this month. The idea came
from a speech Nyong’o gave in 2014, at
the Essence Black Women in Hollywood
brunch, about colorism. “I received a
letter from a girl,” Nyong’o said to the
audience, “and I’d like to share just a
small part of it with you: ‘Dear Lupita,’
it reads, ‘I think you’re really lucky to be
this black but yet this successful in
Hollywood overnight. I was just about
to buy Dencia’s Whitenicious cream to
lighten my skin when you appeared on
the world map and saved me.”
Her words went viral at the time,
and shortly came suggestions for a chil-
dren’s book. But, says Nyong’o, “I just felt
depleted. I was just like, I have nothing
more to say. It’s all in the speech.” With
time, and having felt the enormous
potential of Black Panther, however, she
returned to the idea. “Black Panther was
the key I needed.”
The book centers on a little girl named
Sulwe—Luo for “star”—who is bullied
for being “the color of midnight,” an
experience that mirrors Nyong’o’s own.
“How could she, as dark as she was, have
brightness in her?” Sulwe wonders to
herself. The child’s dreamlike journey
to self-discovery is complex and full of
nuance, even in child-friendly prose.
With illustrations by Vashti Harrison,
the book is as beautiful as it is powerful.
And it’s another book that will serve
as the basis for Nyong’o’s next project,
which she is producing and starring in:
the television adaptation of Americanah,
which Nyong’o’s friend Gurira is adapt-
ing. Gurira worked with Nyong’o on
Panther and also wrote the off-Broadway
play Eclipsed, in which Nyong’o acted.
“We’re so, so, so, so, so close to rolling
the cameras. It’s really exciting to see
that kind of labor of love actually come
to fruition,” says Nyong’o, adding that
Gurira is bringing “her tenacious pas-
sion and her perspective, her humor, her
understanding of the stories and the
worlds of Americanah.”O
ne has to wonder how she’s
able to keep herself balanced
with so many projects. For
Nyong’o, there has to be a clear dis-
mount from each project. “I found that
it’s good to have that interim before I
return to my quote-unquote ‘normal
life.’ ” She insists on traveling to distant
lands, or enrolling in Vipassana medita-
tion retreats. “Finishing an intensive
project is kind of like having a hangover,
where you’re so used to a rigor of exis-
tence and then all of a sudden, there’s
none,” she says. “I make the time because
otherwise I wouldn’t survive.”
She also commands herself—and
those in her inner circle—to embrace a
sense of spontaneity. Back to that sky-
blue Prada on that all-important career-
altering evening in 2014, or rather, the day
before: Nyong’o’s pub-
licist thought a dress
rehearsal could help
ease everyone’s jitters.
For most red carpet
events, Nyong’o’s styl-
ist Micaela Erlanger chooses a look, and
then Vernon François and Nick Barose
will work with Nyong’o on, respectively,
the hair and makeup. But a dress rehears-
al just felt too forced, maybe even a jinx.
“To give me that kind of grandeur,” says
Nyong’o, “would be crippling for me.”
And so, the morning of the Oscars cer-
emony, Nyong’o’s team walked in to dress
her for the first time—the big time—but
they were all a bundle of nerves. Nyong’o
says she was blissed out from a massage
that Alfre Woodard had gifted to her,
but her team was “shaking. They were
physically shaking, they were so ner-
vous.” So Nyong’o turned on the stereo
and blasted “Grown Woman.” “Beyoncé
did the trick. We danced it off, we had a
good laugh, and then we sat down.”
“You’ve got to let the oxygen in,”
Nyong’o says. “I believe in enjoying the
moment. It’s about the moment.”“Lupita was the personification of destiny,”
says Sarah Paulson. “I don’t think
I had ever seen a face filled with so much light—she is
the definition of ‘lit from within.’ ”Lupita Nyong’o
explains
her fashion
evolution at
VF.com.58 VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 2019
HAIR BY VERNON FRANÇOIS; MAKEUPBY NICK BAROSE; MANICUREBY DEBORAH LIPPMANN; TAILOR, MARIA DEL GRECO; SPECIAL THANKS TO MCKINNON AND HARRIS; FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS