Kenyan-American actress Lupita Nyong’o who will be starring in the new Marvel flick ‘Black Panther’ is excited about how well Africa will be represented.
For Nyong’o, representation is paramount, she told The Hollywood Reporter.
“We were creating an aspirational world where an African people are in charge of their own destiny. And that really appealed to me and had the little girl inside me jumping for joy,” she admits.
“To just have African people, black people, at the center of that narrative is so exciting.”
The Oscar winner describes her character, a warrior called Nakia, as both a “loyalist” and a “rebel” who is willing to lay her life for her nation.
Nyong’o said: “She wants to go her own way but also wants to serve her nation.”
She said the film centres on “what it means to be from a place and welcome others into it. T’Challa is the leader of an isolated nation that has managed to keep its autonomy and be self-determining because it has shielded itself from colonisation,” she says, “and how does that nation now relate with the rest of the world?”
The actress, who was raised in Kenya, said she found it easy to relate to Nakia.
“My father raised us to stand up for what we believe in and to fight for what is right. We were always told, ‘You need to make a difference in the world. I live with that insistence all the time.”
Black Panther will premiere in theatres on February 16, 2018.
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