I have something to say about peoples comments about Lupita Nyong’os role in The Force Awakens.
1. I think the most glaring thing about this movie is how much the talk around this movie was about having the three younger leads be a Black man, and Latino man, and a white woman theres some people of color in the background and some “blink an you’ll miss it” moments with women of color. That’s a problem. Women aren’t interchangeable. People of color aren’t interchangeable. It’s bullshit that the progressive movements of white women get associated with all women everywhere. There should be more women of color in these movie franchises that aren’t cgi or covered in body paint. Because so far in every Star Wars trilogy theres one Black women in body paint or cgi and very few on screen (Femi Taylor as Jabbas slave OOla, Mary Oyaya played Luminare Unduli, Lupita Nyong’o played Maz Kanata).
2. It’s not for me or any of you to decide that Lupita got fucked over for this role. It’s not for any of us to say that “she deserves better” because we don’t know what she wanted. We don’t know the circumstances around her taking this role. Yeah, I would rather see her on screen for 2 hours killin it with a light saber and being the chosen one. But I also know filming these epic franchise take a lot out of you. I know that being a main character and being a supporting cgi character is the different between filming for 9 months in 8 locations, 7 months on a sound stage, 4 months in font of green screen, and 2 months dubbing audio AND 3 months doing cgi motion capture. And its also the difference between being locked down for the next 6 years or more and doing a star wars movie every two years and have the freedom to do other shit. If in the next year or so we hear something different from Lupita or anyone behind the scenes then we can say she got fucked over. Do I like that she’s playing a walking fried plantain in this movie? No. But she did a fantastic job and seems to be incredibly excited to be a part of this. Maybe shes carrying around little Thunder in her instagram pics because shes overcompensating or making the best of a bad situation? But we don’t know that. All we know is that she’s in it. I’m not going to sit here and act like Black Actresses have such a great history with Hollywood. But if I was writing for a tv show I loved and a bunch of people who called themselves my fans were saying I got fucked over and I deserved more I would feel really weird about the entire situation.
She said in an interview that she wanted a CGI role
“12 Years a Slave was a film that was so much about my body, and Star Wars is not at all. There was a liberation in being able to play in a medium where my body was not the thing in question,” Nyong’o told BuzzFeed News. “The acting challenge I was looking for was completely different, a complete departure from 12 Years a Slave.”
There we go. ^