*Long before racist trolls attacked her Helen of Troy casting, Lupita Nyong’o revealed a painful childhood truth. She once begged God for lighter skin.
“I definitely wished for lighter skin. I tried what I could to make it so – prayer and stuff like that,” she told The Sunday Times Style. The confession came in a 2019 interview where the Oscar winner traced how colourism shaped her early years.
The wound started at home. Her sister had a lighter complexion, and Nyong’o noticed adults showering the girl with affection she rarely received. “So I definitely internalised that,” she said. Classmates teased her too, while every magazine cover and TV screen reinforced the same message. Those forces, she explained, “subconsciously programme you to think that light is right.”
Books deepened the damage. Young Lupita devoured Cinderella and Rapunzel without ever finding a face like hers. When a character finally resembled her, it was Enid Blyton’s golliwog, a caricature history has since judged harshly. She only understood the insult as an adult. “It was only later when I grew up and looked at them, I was like, ‘Oh dear,'” she recalled.
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Her answer was “Sulwe,” a children’s story she wrote for kids “who haven’t yet been served their value by the world.”
Those words carry fresh weight today. Social media erupted over news that Nyong’o would portray Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” with detractors insisting the legendary beauty could not be Black. She stars opposite Zendaya, Matt Damon, and Anne Hathaway.
Nyong’o refuses to take the bait. “This is a mythological story,” she told Elle. “Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defense. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”
“The Odyssey” arrives exclusively in theaters July 17.
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