Lupita Nyong’o On Ambition And Being Seduced By Roles That Have The Potential To Shift A Narrative

Lupita Nyong’o is someone who absolutely knows what she wants. “It’s passion,” Nyong’o tells Vogue’s features editor Olivia Marks, during their cover interview in Brooklyn at the end of last year. “I definitely want to claim ambition, but I get very compulsive about the things I am passionate about, to the point of not sleeping. It’s very impractical. I fight the barriers that I form for myself, because they’re often ridiculous.”

For her next challenge Nyong’o will produce, and star in, an adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah. “I had never seen the African contemporary experience explored, celebrated and analysed in such a way,” she says of the impact the story had on her. “The observations she makes as a non-American black person about America are things that I had never articulated but had felt. I was just madly in love.”

Read more: Lupita Nyong’o Covers The February Issue Of British Vogue

In the six years since she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her first film, 12 Years a Slave – the one for which she was plucked fresh out of the Yale School of Drama by director Steve McQueen – Nyong’o has given herself “permission to take things slow”, carefully picking the projects that allow her to make a difference. “I don’t get fulfilment from the number of zeros attached to a project,” she explains. “What I’m seduced by is the potential to shift a narrative. That is very seductive to me, having social and cultural impact.”

The subject of politics is met with exasperation, but not because Nyong’o is afraid of speaking her mind. “I speak up for the things I can personally vouch for,” she says. “There’s a lot going on in this world, a lot of causes that are noble. But I feel most useful when I have a personal connection. And the conviction to say something.”

Read more: The Meeting Of Minds Behind Lupita Nyong’o’s No-Holds-Barred Style

The actor will not, however, be drawn on her personal life – “Privacy is a commodity that is hard to come by” – but does concede that her line of work can sometimes be lonely. “Filming is so time-consuming. And intense,” she explains. “With Black Panther, a lot of us were single. On Little Monsters, nobody was single. Everyone, when they’re done with their day’s work, wants to go home to their families, which makes a whole lot of sense. When you don’t have that it’s very isolating.”

Read the full interview in the February issue of British Vogue, on newsstands on 3 January