Lupita Nyong’o enjoyed near immediate success after her first movie, but what followed was at times challenging.

In an interview with CNN’s Inside Africa published on Saturday, November 22, Nyong’o, 42, revealed that though she won an Oscar for her breakthrough performance as Patsey in the 2014 film 12 Years a Slave, she didn’t receive the kind of follow-up film offers that she expected.

“But you know what’s interesting is that, after I won that Academy Award, you’d think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna get lead roles here and there.’ [Instead, it was], ‘Oh, Lupita, we’d like you to play another movie where you’re a slave, but this time you’re on a slave ship,’” she recalled. “Those are the kind of offers I was getting in the months after winning my Academy Award.”

That time in her career was “very ten

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