Lupita Nyong’o covers the latest issue of the Hollywood Reporter. It’s a preview/promotion for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, where Lupita reprises her role as Nakia. The first half of the Hollywood Reporter profile is all about the film and how the cast and crew dealt with the passing of Chadwick Boseman. The second half is about Lupita the artist, still finding her rhythm with the enormous success she’s had so quickly. Lupita even makes her first comments about the Will Smith-Chris Rock stuff at the Oscars this year. That’s right, Lupita wasn’t chiming in on all of that drama months ago, even though she was seated just a few feet away from Will. Some highlights from THR:

On her successful Oscar campaign in 2013/2014: “I was mitigating my panic at all times because extreme failure and extreme success, the body doesn’t know the difference. Either way, you are in distress. I’m proud of how I weathered that particular storm, but it cost me. It cost me physically. I was extremely thin. My body was ravaging itself, and I got fibroids.”

Lupita learned of Chadwick’s death in a text from Viola Davis. “I couldn’t believe it. I was paralyzed. He had an aura. He was the leader, and we were all good with it.”

Chadwick always maintained his boundaries: “There were moments when Chadwick said no to me, and I was not happy with him. I fought tooth and nail to change his mind, and he would ever so quietly be like, ‘I know, but no,’ with love.” Once, she wanted him to come to South Africa with her and Danai Gurira to promote Black Panther. “I felt it was important to have him on the continent, as an African American coming to South Africa. I thought that was a potent symbol, and he wouldn’t go. Now I understand he was battling cancer and probably had medical reasons. I tried everything. I tried charm. I debated him on the political front, and he smiled, he sighed, and he was just like, ‘I know, Lupita. I can’t go.’”

She supports Marvel’s decision not to recast T’Challa. “That is not the death of the Black Panther, that’s the whole point. It’s laying to rest [T’Challa] and allowing for real life to inform the story of the movies. I know that there are all sorts of reasons why people want him to be recast, but I don’t have the patience. I don’t have the presence of mind, or I don’t have the objectivity to argue with that. I don’t. I’m very biased.”

Whether she’s the new Black Panther: “If I told you that, I might as well just … swim into the ocean and never be seen again.”

Breaking beauty barriers as a dark-skinned Black woman: “I was the subject of a much larger conversation, a socio-political one. I appreciated that larger conversation and at no point did I not want it to be happening. But I wanted to participate in the practice of being me, not in the theory of being me.”

On the rumors that she’s dating Jared Leto or Michael B. Jordan: “Why have I kept it private? Because I want some things just to be for me, and I want my work to be louder than my love, that’s it. And I honestly hate the idea of having to publicly withstand my exes. I don’t need their faces in my face.”

On the Will Smith/Chris Rock Oscar stuff: “Once the moment was over, I realized, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way all this transpired and I’m not in the shot.’ I knew as soon as it was over that I was going to be a meme.” On what it was like to be there that night, she’ll let the memes do her talking for her. “I don’t want to add any more fuel to that thing, quite frankly.”

Whether Marvel movies are swallowing the industry: “It becomes a philosophical question about what is art and what is its purpose. I believe that art plays a role in moving the people that experience it, and a lot of people are moved by Marvel. Is you being moved by this thing less important than me being moved by Picasso? I think to be culturally prosperous, to be artistically prosperous as a people, is to have options… In Kenya, sugar was sugar, it was brown or it was white. You come to the States, and a whole section in the supermarket is dedicated to sugars. So many different sugars. That is a symbol of prosperity, when you have options. So I personally love a good Marvel movie, but it doesn’t take me away from really wanting the little character-driven film. I believe in the fight for those things to be kept alive because the one thing we always want, the ultimate privilege, is choice.”

[From THR]

I love a boundary-setting queen – her answer on the Will Smith stuff is perfect. I wish more celebrities had kept that energy. I enjoyed her answer for the Marvel question too – while she’s a huge part of a Marvel franchise, she’s not going to piss all over people who criticize Marvel. Film-goers want choices and need choices, but Marvel fans should be respected.

Lupita also told a long story about what happened after she won the Oscar and everyone was telling her she needed to be booking movies right and left, and she ended up calling Emma Thompson, who she had met during the awards season. Emma took her to dinner and told Lupita to take whatever time off she wanted and that if she wanted to go do a play, she should. Emma validated Lupita’s feeling that she didn’t actually have to “strike while the iron is hot.”

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Cover & IG courtesy of THR.