We all, first should agree that the movies was amazing, as for me, it was intriguing and motivating given that i have always thought that i would be on film as an actor or writing aweosme scripts for some.
So how was Lupita’s experience during the 12 years as a Slave movie? in my web trolling and blog reading i gathered a pretty engaging aspect of part of her experience in it.
Filming 12 Years a Slave wasn’t easy. It’s a hard film, and the hardest scenes involve Nyong’o’s character, who is raped, beaten and abused by the plantation owner, played by Michael Fassbender, and his evil wife, played by Sarah Paulson. Nyong’o has talked about the discomfort, physical and emotional, of sleeping overnight in the complicated prosthetic back piece that depicted Patsey’s wounds after the whipping scene, but one wonders how she and Fassbender got through the filming of those moments together.
[su_quote cite=”Lupita Nyong’o” url=”https://twitter.com/Lupita_Nyongo”]We spent a long time hugging. And we did a lot of dancing. We partied hard. It was really great. We both had a good in-and-out-of-character work sensibility. When we were in it, we were in it, and between takes would leave each other alone. It was like going into a boxing ring. We come, knock each other down, regroup, and at the end we hold hands.[/su_quote]
Her parents were disturbed when they first saw the film. Nyong’o says that her mother “didn’t talk about it with me for a while. And when she did, she was very mousy. She just said, ‘You did really well.’ But she was heartbroken. She was very quietened by it. Very moved.”
And her father? “My father, he’s a different kind of person. He said something…” There is a long pause. “He was at the premiere in London, and he said something funny to the effect of, ‘Why did you let them beat you like that?’” She laughs. “He also said that someone had asked him whether he could relate to the story, given his political past.” Nyong’o’s father once served as a minister and was harassed along with other family members for his opposition to Daniel arap Moi, the country’s president for over 20 years. Nonetheless, says Nyong’o, “he said that his life is like a dinner party compared with [12 Years]. There’s recognising that we are very privileged.”
One imagines that, to play the most brutal scenes, Nyong’o had to disconnect, but she says that isn’t a word that makes sense in the context. “Disconnection suggests that I can shut down and be someone else. I can’t do that. I feel like I use my personhood to do what I do. But it is understanding that it’s make-believe, and recognising that I have the privilege of doing this in a make-believe world, rather than having this be the truth of my life. And remembering that allows me to go for it with an open heart, because I get to walk away. Patsey didn’t get to walk away.”
The role Nyong’o is playing nightly on stage in Eclipsed touches on similar topics of trauma, enslavement and sexual violence. When she gets home to Brooklyn at 11pm, she watches mindless TV (the comedy Jane The Virgin is her current favourite) to relax. She hasn’t been back to Kenya for a while, but since winning the Oscar has been raised to the level of a national hero at home in a way that, she says laughing, is “quite spellbinding”.
Interesting, huh, I figured i should share this here because, as I see it, Lupita Nyong’o is a source of inspiration to many here in Kenya, and as long as she keeps doing us proud, we will always be family!
