Name: Lupita Nyong'o's Insightful Interview on Growing Up In Kenya, Diversity in Film & New Documentary
Uploaded: 2020-03-27T19:52:35.000Z
Duration: 14 min 9 s
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my name's Yumi Decay, and I'm joined by Oscar award winning actress Lupita and Younger to discuss her upcoming Channel four documentary.

Adverbs of degree

We follow her journey to uncover the hidden story off the highly skilled female fighters who inspired the creation of the dorm.

In Dahomey Kingdom, West Africa So and before we sort of cut from the documentary would like to get to know you a little bit more.

Could you tell us a little bit about your childhood?

I know that you were born in Mexico, but grew up in Kenya.

Did you have any favorite memories of Kenya growing up?

Ah, in Rattle, which is our family's ancestral home with all my cousins and running amok and climbing mango trees and eating lots of guavas and, um, taking donkey rides to my grand with a shop and things like that.

It sounds very Gillick over the holidays, so in terms of your acting career lets off, take it back a little bit, wash your first job, and did you always want to act my first job, meaning?

I was 14 and I played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in Nairobi at our repertory theatre at the time, which was called Phoenix Players.

And I knew I want to be an actor from when I was very young, But I didn't really, truly admitted out loud until I was about 26.

And this was that kind of stereotype of African parents or being like we are doctor.

I don't have very conventional African parents.

My parents raised us all to be like, What do you want to do?

And so, uh, yeah, my I didn't get any resistance from my family.

My dad used to be an actor himself when he was in high school and college, and so he was very encouraging.

He would always come and see me perform in school.

My mom, too, she would drive me to her soles and wait for me to finish drive me home.

So they were extremely supportive, but I think it's the thing I was blocked or limited by what the largest society said, you know, and the fact that I didn't see what it was I wanted to be, So I didn't know it was possible for someone like me, all of that rhymed A second talent s just a sort of following about that.

You are little one of the most prominent black women in the acting industry right now, Going from, you know, where you couldn't actually see yourself, metaphorically speaking to solve, essentially seen yourself almost everywhere.

When it happens, it doesn't make much sense, you know, like when I was in Benin for this documentary, you know, we're driving along and there was a Black Panther, the billboard, and, you know, they chose to use the African women and it and it was me and dumb.

I own the billboard in a It was like, Wow, I've never been here And yet there I am.

It's a very odd experience, but also very encouraging toe.

See that and to know that their kids who are really little and that will be there, Norm, to see people like me in in the in the media.

Absolutely thank you on justice will win it back to Kenya for a minute.

What's your favorite canyon dish and can you cook?

And fish, you know, dried, some dried and then cooked in spices and and lots of tomatoes and onions.

And yeah, So people are definitely gonna want to know when it comes to the Gulf wars.

Whether it's from Liberia or or anywhere that Joel off appears, I will eat it.

So, as one of the most prominent black actresses in Hollywood, what do you personally make around the conversation that we're having about colorism?

But I guess we're sold reaching a point where you know, we may be seeing little diversity within that diversity of black women.

More dark skin representation because, well, I feel very fortunate to be in the position I'm in.

And I feel like this is not the time for coming to conclusions.

And so it's a time to actually see to it that we have that diversity, that we have that inclusion and it it's it's in who has the power to cast its and who is telling the story to begin with.

Because when the people who know the experience, um uh, are holding the pen, holding the power and holding the money, then we see more of that.

We will see more of that trickled down to who's in front of the camera.

You know that we're we're the last ingredient in that long conveyor belt of of of overproduction.

But, you know, I was a Children's book to address this very issue, and I just learned that Beyonce just released a song about colorism.

So I feel like there's there is a movement and there's there's people speaking up and changing the narrative.

And that's where my focus is on what I can do to change that narrative, to make it that much easier for someone else like me to even dare to dream a bigger dream on Dhe.

Then to see it realized, Thank you so much.

So for those who are yet to what your incredible documentary can you tell us a little bit about your journey to Benin but also what the documentary's generally about S.

The documentary is about the women called the ago Gee, who most people know as the Amazons off Africa.

And they were a group of women whose job it was to protect the king and kingdom.

44 4000 of them, and they were in existed in 17th 18th and 19th century.

They inspired, for example, the dorm elegy in Black Panther, but in terms of who they were and what they were about, how they came to be all that we really don't know because their story has been told through the filter off the European reporter, you know?

They have been fetishized and oversexualized and exotic sized, and so there It has been a rather in accurate depiction off who these women were.

So I was tasked with the job of going down there with Channel Four and finding out the true story from their descendants.

You know, learning from the oral history to kind of rewrite our history.

So how did you decide that you wanted to learn more about the ecology?

Well, I was curious about them because, of course, I'd heard, you know, a little bit.

I had heard whispers of like, oh, Amazons of Africa.

And I was very aware of how often we have to contend with, um outside his understanding of who we were.

So I was really tempted to go there myself and visit and learned that story firsthand.

I love the continent I'm from I'm curious to learn more.

I feel like most of my education has been so Eurocentric, You know, I went to a British system.

Schools are learned about the Thames River, even if I had never visited it, you know?

And I feel like it's It was have been over.

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Lupita Nyong'o's Insightful Interview on Growing Up In Kenya, Diversity in Film & New Documentary

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