Ten things you didn’t know about Lupita and Solomon

Lupita Nyong’o not only won the Oscar for best supporting actress on Sunday night for her role as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave, but it was also her very first film.  

If that isn’t impressive, I don’t know what is.

So in honour of all things Lupita, here are ten things you didn’t know about her but should.

• She was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents of the Luo Community. Her father, Peter Anyang Nyong’o, is a politician who sought refuge in Mexico before Lupita was born. The family moved back to Kenya when she was a year old.

• Lupita did not grow up dreaming of winning an Oscar because she didn’t know what the awards were until she saw them for the first time while in university.

• Lupita was Ralph Fiennes’ runner while he worked on The Constant Gardner outside Nairobi in 2004. When she told him she wanted to act, Fiennes said: “Lupita, act only if you can’t breathe without it”.

• She earned a degree in film and theater studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Students were required to make two films but Lupita made five.

• She earned a spot in the rigorous, highly competitive three-year masters in fine arts programme at the Yale School of Drama.

• Reportedly close to one thousand women auditioned for the role of Patsey in 12 Years a Slave. Lupita sent in her tape before she graduated from Yale and won the part after a spectacular audition.

• Lupita can also add model to her resume as she recently signed on to be the face of Miu Miu for the Italian brand’s spring/summer 2014 collection.

• In 2009, she wrote, directed and produced the documentary In My Genes, about the treatment of Kenya’s albino population.

• Her newest film, Non-Stop is in theatres now featuring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore and Michelle Dockery.

• She is fluent in English, Spanish, Swahili and Luo. The latter is a dialect spoken by her Kenyan tribe, the same tribe as Barack Obama’s father.

With 12 Years a Slave taking home the awards for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards, we thought it only fitting to dedicate an article to the man behind the film, Solomon Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

For those who haven’t seen the film or read the book, Northup was a free man living in New York when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Here are ten things youshould know about him:

• Solomon was drugged and kidnapped in 1841 and was a slave for 12 years after he had been enticed with a job offer as a violinist in Washington DC.

• He left behind a wife and two children.

• Solomon was born free. His parents were freed slaves in Saratoga Springs, New York.

• He essentially freed himself by writing letters and passing them on to a Canadian carpenter to send to his family and friends in New York.

• In his first year of freedom, Solomon wrote a memoir, 12 Years a Slave and gave dozens of lectures throughout the northeast to support abolition. The book was an instant best seller.

• Northup sued the slave traders in DC but lost because the law prohibited him as a black man from testifying against a white man. Without his testimony, he couldn’t sue for civil damages. A few years later in New York, the men were charged with kidnapping but two years later the charges were dropped.

• As hard to believe as Northup’s story is, there are hundreds of documented cases of free African American men, women
and children being kidnapped.

• Documents show Solomon joined the Underground Railroad after he was freed.

• He became a property owner in Glens Falls, NY.

• What happened to Solomon Northup still remains a mystery. Many believe his kidnappers found and murdered him.  Others suggest he was kidnapped a second time. Some say he went to live with his daughter in Virginia and died of natural causes. But the version that’s probably most likely is that he reinvented himself with a new identity.

Sources: The Standard Digital News, www.dazeddigital.com and www.wonderwall.msn.com