The Oscar-winning actress discusses heartbreak, US politics and her unexpected affection for cats
Wool dress, Roksanda; yellow stone drop earrings, Erdem
am staring at an empty screen where Lupita Nyong’o’s face should be. The Oscar-winning actress is in New York promoting her latest film but all I can hear is the sound of rummaging while she searches for something just out of reach. “Look!” she exclaims, appearing once more on our Zoom call hugging a cat-shaped cushion with a photo of a reclining ginger moggy on it. “It’s Yoyo!”
Yoyo is the name of her actual pet, a rescue tom whom Nyong’o adopted last year after a particularly heart-wrenching breakup. She now has eyes for no one else. “My love for my cat is singular. If I'm ever so lucky to be in a romantic relationship again, it'll be because of him,” she says. “I was ready to shut that door and lock it and bolt it. He has ensured that my heart remains open.” Nyong’o professes all this while affectionately nuzzling the cushion. Someone made me this little pillow and at first, I thought, ‘what an odd gift’. But then as I was packing, I realised it means I get to take Yoyo with me.” She is smiling like, if you’ll excuse the pun, the cat who got the cream.
The extraordinary thing about Nyong’o’s new romance is that she’s spent most of her life utterly terrified of four-legged felines. It was only when John Krasinski sought her out to play the lead in this summer’s prequel to his horror movie franchise A Quiet Place: Day One, in which her character has a service cat, that she was forced to face her fear. After a bout of immersive therapy, where she was obliged to stroke the animals for hours at a time, Nyong’o hasn’t looked back. “My family can't get over it,” she laughs. “My sisters are so disturbed every time I send them a picture of Yoyo. They’re like, oh my God, our sister has been stolen.’”
Nyong’o is the first to admit that her life is almost unrecognisable from little over 12 months ago. Last October, the year she turned 40, she gave the world a rare glimpse into her private affairs by posting on Instagram about her separation from the American presenter and sports commentator Selema Masekela. “It is necessary for me to share a personal truth and publicly dissociate myself from someone I can no longer trust…” she wrote. “I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception.”
Embroidered coat, silk velvet trousers, Giorgio Armani; rose gold earrings, De Beers; heels, Stella McCartney
In previous interviews when explaining why she decided to share her relationship status online, Nyong’o has described social media as a ‘flex zone’ where people curate their lives to show the best of themselves. To combat this manicured pretence, she wanted to be honest and open, character traits she strives to uphold in herself. Announcing her anguish so publicly also meant she didn’t have to tell people one-by-one what had happened.
Speaking now, it is clear the actress has spent a long time wondering how she was caught off guard by Masekela’s betrayal. “You go through a lot of like, ‘Why? What were the signs? Why didn't I see them? And if I did, why didn’t I act on them?’ Also, replaying moments and thinking, ‘Oh, I felt this apprehension, and I ignored it. Why did I ignore it?’ It can get toxic to beat yourself up about a past you can't change, but it’s also an opportunity to learn about yourself.”
Wool dress, Alaïa; gold and pearl earrings, CompletedWorks
She won’t be broadcasting so candidly again. “It’s hard enough to go through heartbreak privately. When the world has an image of you in relation to someone else, it prolongs the healing process because the memory is emblazoned in the public domain.”
The year before the breakup, she had moved from Brooklyn, New York, where she had lived for 11 years, to LA. A month after the relationship ended, Nyong’o adopted Yoyo. “I am in a transitional period,” she says of the upheaval. “A lot of the things that have defined my life have faded away or changed. A big move like that involves seeking a new rhythm of life, a new community, a new lifestyle.” This reset includes a house that she is in the process of redesigning in the hope that it makes her space feel more like home.
Indeed, home is a fluid concept for Lupita Nyong’o. Though her family originate from the Luo tribe in Kenya, she was born in Mexico City in 1983, the second of five siblings. Her father, Peter and her mother, Dorothy, had moved there for their safety after Nyong'o's paternal uncle mysteriously disappeared and was never found – her family believe he was killed in order to intimidate her father, who was a vocal critic of the Kenyan government (and is now a politician in the country). While Nyong’o describes Kenya, where she grew up, as “my foundation, my ethnic background and my soul”, she has a Mexican passport and also identifies as Mexican. She now speaks fluent Spanish alongside Luo, Swahili and English.
Yet America, where she has lived for the past two decades, holds another special place in her heart: “my spirit has been formed here”. In her family’s social circles, acting wasn’t considered a real job. Nyong’o, who loved performing little skits in front of loved ones, convinced herself that her destiny was to be behind, rather than in front of, the camera. Her lightbulb moment came from Ralph Fiennes on the set of The Constant Gardener where she was working as a production assistant. He encouraged her to “do anything else” that she might be interested in, because the business of acting was particularly tough for women, saying: “Only act if you feel like your life depends on it.” (Years later, Fiennes recalled the “very moving” moment he saw Nyong’o again at a film festival. She had gone on to graduate from the Yale School of Drama, beating more than 900 other applicants to gain a place at the prestigious university, which boasts Hollywood royalty Meryl Streep as an alumna.)
Her time at Yale was filled with highs and lows; she was a student when Harvey Weinstein twice propositioned her, including once at his home where he’d asked for a massage with his young family watching a film in the next-door room. In an op-ed in the New York Times she describes the shame she felt by “joining in the conspiracy of silence that has allowed this predator to prowl for so many years.” Nyong’o vowed never to work with the producer – a potentially career-ending move – but it turned out she wouldn’t need to after Steve McQueen cast her as Patsey in his 2013 movie 12 Years a Slave. She hadn’t even graduated, and it was to be her first feature film. When she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress the following year, she dedicated her golden statue to “every little child… no matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”
"If I'm ever so lucky to be in a romantic relationship again, it'll be because of my cat"
Since then, the actress has been in constant demand on movie sets and magazine covers, in blockbusters and on billboards. As well as being a face of Lancôme, she has played the thousand-year-old pirate Maz Kanata in the Star Wars franchise, the fiercely proud mother of a chess-playing prodigy in Queen of Katwe, and Nakia, the warrior-woman in Black Panther. This year, alongside starring in A Quiet Place: Day One, she voices Roz, the cyborg protagonist in The Wild Robot, based on the trilogy of children’s novels by Peter Brown. It wasn’t a part she instinctively knew she wanted to take, but she’s delighted she did. “I’m a very cautious person, and with animation, it takes so long to make – so that’s a long-term relationship you are getting into,” she says. “But I love the book’s illustrations and its message – how it highlights the value of human kindness and offers a touching ode to motherhood. The film is irreverent in its humour, but also unabashedly earnest and sweet.”
