Lupita embraces role after ‘Slave’

BEING THE FIRST African actress to win an Academy Award didn’t matter much in the Ugandan slum where Lupita Nyong’o filmed “Queen of Katwe.”

The locals working the market stalls didn’t recognize the face that adorns fashion magazines across the world — and neither did the production’s security.

“Slum dwellers, they don’t care about Oscar winners,” Nyong’o told the Daily News.

“Often times when we were on set, I would get stopped from entering a scene by the guards because they thought I was one of the market women. I blended in completely,” she recalled. “It was refreshing to be in that environment and be anonymous for a change while filming.”

No such anonymity awaited her in the film industry, where Nyong’o felt pressure to match her emotionally devastating turn in her first major role, “12 Years a Slave.” At the time, her part in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” seemed a long time and a galaxy far, far away.

“It was daunting,” Nyong’o said. “After you’ve had such a fulfilling acting experience like I had on ‘12 Years a Slave,’ what else could inspire or electrify me in the same way?”

She found an answer in the script for “Queen of Katwe,” opening Friday, sent to her by director Mira Nair, a family friend. Nyong’o’s next move would involve chess.

The film follows Phiona Mutesi, played by newcomer Madina Nalwanga, a Katwe girl forced to hawk vegetables instead of going to school to help her widowed mother Harriet (Nyong’o) support the family. Potential escape from poverty comes when local volunteer chess teacher Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) discovers Phiona’s keen mind for the game. What makes her improbable rise through the international ranks even more amazing is that it actually happened.

“It’s not very often you see this kind of story on a platform like a Disney movie — an African story with Africans front and center of their own narrative,” said Nyong’o. “It’s a rarity. For me this film was an oasis.”

“Because, of course, being an African myself, it’s important for me to see and be a part of stories about people like me.”

Nyong’o’s maternal relationship with the child stars from the movie continued off-screen.

Born in Mexico and raised in Kenya, she remembers the sensory overload when she arrived in the United States as a teen. And she knew her young co-stars, Nalwanga and Martin Kabanza, both acting rookies, embarked on their first trip to North America via red carpets and media scrums. So she took them under her wing and then took them to burger joints.

“I remember just being very overwhelmed with choice when I came to the U.S.,” she said. Nalwanga and Kabanza, perhaps thanks to their coach, navigated their first red carpet at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival like seasoned veterans.

“This movie is doing for Madina what chess did for (the real) Phiona,” said Nyong’o. “I know how it can change one’s life.”