Do we like Lupita Nyong’o?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up, she has spoken up at a cost, and she does conservation work, but the record on LGBTQ+ issues is thin.
Lupita Nyong’o was born in Mexico City on 1 March 1983, when her parents were political exiles, and the family went back to Kenya while she was a kid. She started acting as a teenager in Kenya, studied film at Hampshire College, then did a master's at the Yale School of Drama. It's a long road from there to Hollywood.
The big break came fast: she won the 2014 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years a Slave. Since then she's played Nakia in Black Panther and its sequel, been in Us and A Quiet Place: Day One, and voiced Roz in The Wild Robot. She's a proper screen presence, not a one-hit wonder.
The recent stoush is about The Odyssey. Variety reported that Matt Walsh called Nolan a “coward” over her casting as Helen of Troy, and that Musk agreed and claimed Nolan wanted “the awards”. Variety called the reaction racist backlash. She told Elle she wasn't “spending my time thinking of a defense”, and that “the criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not”.
On the harm test, we found nothing nasty from her and no run of dodgy co-stars or projects. We didn't find a direct statement from her on trans rights, and we couldn't confirm a claim that she co-produced the Kenyan film Rafiki, so we've left it out. She's also publicly backed Kenya's youth protesters, and she did it knowing it would cost her with the government.
In a 2024 BBC interview she compared Kenya's crackdown on protesters to the Moi era, when her father was imprisoned. She called it “chilling” that the government was using “tactics I thought were left behind”. The government's spokesperson rejected the comparison and said the government acted to restore order. She also praised the young people on the front lines.
On the planet side, she's worked with WildAid on elephant protection and anti-poaching since 2015, and WildAid named her a Wildlife Champion in 2019. It's real work, not just a photo op.