Lupita Nyong’o opened up about her decision to not participate in the polarising film The Woman King, starring Viola Davis, John Boyega and Thuso Mbedu.
Why did Lupita Nyong’o walk out on ‘The Woman King’?
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the famous actress whose set to star in the upcoming Chadwick Boseman tribute, The Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, revealed she passed on the opportunity to work alongside a star-studded cast in the Gina Prince-Bythewood film due to ideological conflicts on the legacy of the notorious Agoji tribe.
“It was very amicable, the departure from it, but I felt it wasn’t the role for me to play,” she said.
The Woman King interpolates the history of the Agoji tribe and is centred around the largely ficitonalised ‘origin’ story of Nanisca, a general whose role was to train the next generation of West Africa’s most lethal army of the Dahomey kingdom.
In reality, the Agoji tribe played a crucial role in the slave trade boom between the 17th and 19 century. The Prince-Bythewood interpretation, which released in theatres September 2022, received widespread backlash for glorifying the evils of the notorious tribe.
In response to online naysayers, the movie’s main star and producer, Davis praised Prince-Bythewood for defending her artistic integrity against Twitter ‘know-it-alls’.
“I agree with Gina Prince-Bythewood’s saying you’re not going to win an argument on Twitter. We entered the story where the kingdom was in flux, at a crossroads. They were looking to find some way to keep their civilization and kingdom alive. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that they were decimated. Most of the story is fictionalized. It has to be,” she said in an interview with Variety.
Despite the mounting backlash and online boycotts, The Woman King, as reported by BET, has grossed over $76 million (est. R1.39 billion) since its release.
Nyong’o, who released a short documentary exploring the impact the Agoji tribe’s legacy left on West Africa, refused to get into further detail about her decision to walk away from the movie.