It is interesting how they introduce her; Mexican-born Kenyan Lupita… For heavens sake, can we just have our Lupita as the Kenyan girl we all saw own her talent here, right from scratch before you guys noticed her this year? Another headline story read: “In the spring of 2012, Lupita Nyong’o graduated from the Yale School of Drama.
Then she was cast in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave — and her life changed almost overnight…” Like really? Do you have any single clue how this girl has worked her acting life out, scaling through the entertainment ladder to her new epitomised praise.
It did not start after Yale School. Neither is it all about Steve McQueen and the Brad Pitts of this world. How do you explain a genius so ambitious to a point of eclipsing the fame of her own father Anyang’ Nyong’o — one of Kenya’s prolific politician of great rhetoric wit? Not even her cousin Isis Nyong’o, who was named one of Africa’s most powerful women by Forbes magazine in 2012 could steal her thunder.
However still, how touching it is to ponder about this extraordinary star’s humble spirit; that of an everyday girl visiting an ordinary Nairobi restaurant with her friends to share a plate of her favourite meal, a Kenyan dish of fish and ugali.
You should have seen her embracing her local fans among them the somewhat the societal disgraced albino ones during the launch of her own directed and produced documentary In My Genes back in 2009. She had just cleared her studies in Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies. She had worked on the production crew of many films, including Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes, and Mira Nair’s The Namesake.
She starred in the 2008 short film East River, directed by Marc Grey and shot in Brooklyn, New York. She would have stayed in New York — with other celebrities. However, she always wanted to tell the African story and with that, she returned home and starred in the Kenyan television series Shuga.
A successful story capturing the harsh truth on Nairobi urban youth and their destructive social lifestyle. That is the Lupita we love. Very few writers want to remind us that she was involved in many local production in Kenya and around East Africa back in the day.
Very few want to remind us that while at Yale, she appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter’s Tale. It is only after capturing this that one can understand Lupita Nyong’o, the Kenyan girl everyone is trying to cash on now.
“I haven’t yet found a suitable word in the English language that captures how it feels,” Nyong’o told EW last week. “It’s overwhelming. It’s exciting. It’s humbling.
It’s a lot.” “I felt in playing Patsey that it was a great responsibility, and so these things are reminders that I was in some way successful at portraying this incredible woman,” she continued. “And for that, I feel relief. Because I was just so blessed by that whole experience, and it was so rewarding in itself.
All this is just a welcome, welcome bonus.” That in itself captures the true heart of Lupita who is no doubt Kenya’s biggest export and most outstanding entertainment personality this year. Let the drums roll, hail Lupita! Because long before 12 Years a Slave, before the accolades on the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actor Guild Award, we believed in you. Go girl! Tell it to the world!
–standardmedia.co.ke
