Inside the April issue of Instyle, Lupita Nyong'o admits that the prospect of falling short has been scary. “Right after the Oscars, I had no idea what I was going to do next. Zero clue, there’s a part of me that thought my life would go back to normal. Like at school. But it didn’t. I did not get out of that unscathed, you know?”
It’s hard for any actress to succeed, but nonwhite actresses have to weather discrimination and distractions that others don’t. When asked about what she makes of the previous day’s news that Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith are boycotting the Oscars over the lack of diversity among its nominees. Nyong’o, the last person of color to win an Oscar for acting before two years of #OscarsSoWhite protests, has been thinking it through.
“It’s a disappointment that the nominations this year have not reflected some of the work of people of color, and I hope this moment helps fuel that conversation,” she says, respectful of the Academy (94 percent white) that honored her but critical of an industry that is now under scrutiny for discrimination. “There is a real imbalance, from the very creation of the stories and who’s telling them, how, and why. Change has to happen with the writers, the studio, the marketers, the directors. That’s got to be diversified because there is a hunger for the expansion of the role of people of color in the center of narratives.”
Simply beautiful
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