ELLE Summer Cover: Lupita Nyong’o Is “Honored” to Be Your Helen of Troy

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Lupita Nyong’o Is “Honored” to Be Your Helen of Troy
The Odyssey star on how her Helen of Troy “is representative of the world.”

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On not being familiar with the source material for The Odyssey: “I really had no idea what The Odyssey was,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, snap, I don’t know the first thing about this.’ So it was a crash course. I picked up the books and read them immediately. I have this film to thank for my Greek mythological education.” And by “picked up the books,” she really means she read The Odyssey and listened to The Iliad, and for good reason. “Audra McDonald reads it…It is the best audiobook I have ever listened to.”

On her fond memories of working with such a “prolific director” like Christopher Nolan: “He has quite an enigmatic persona, but working with him was so accessible,” she says. “He’s really great with actors. I felt supported. I felt challenged. And what I love most about his approach is that he really wants to know what the actors think. He really gives us the responsibility and the authority to advocate for our characters. You’re very much a part of consultations about hair, makeup, wardrobe, all of that.”

For Nolan, Nyong’o was always his choice to play Helen of Troy, a role that required acting chops as much as physical beauty: “The strength and the poise were so important to the character of Helen. And Lupita makes it look effortless. I’m sure there’s a tremendous amount of discipline and training that goes into projecting that kind of poise and feeling the emotion bubbling beneath the character, the layers of the character right there underneath. She’s just an incredible person to work with, and I was absolutely desperate for her to do the part.”

On dismissing the idea of what it means to portray “the face that launched a thousand ships”: “You can’t perform beauty,” she says. “I want to know who a character is. What is beyond beauty? What is beyond looks? That’s the thing about doing such a well-known text, which has been studied and interpreted and derived from. The research could be endless. The good thing about working with a writer like Chris is that it’s on the page. The investigation starts with the pages you’re given. That’s what I based it on.”

On feeling like she had no choice to go public with her fibroid diagnosis: “I thought to myself, ‘If I’m going through this, that means so many other people are going through this, too.’” She has recently partnered with the Foundation for Women’s Health, and earlier this year launched the Make Fibroids Count campaign to fund a research grant in her name. “Just because something is common doesn’t make it normal. How have we as women internalized the de-prioritization of our own pain, and what can we do to reverse that? I’m sounding the alarm for myself, because I have normalized my own pain for too long,” she says. “I needed to participate in seeing the change that I want to happen. The one thing I knew I could do, because this is my line of work, is storytelling. I can tell my story and then join forces with other people who care as much as I do.”

“I feel like my intuitive voice gave me no choice,” she says. “I would rather not share my HIPAA-protected information. I would really rather not. But I also recognize the power of telling my story. When you tell your story, you heal. And when other people hear your story, you offer them healing, too. Speaking up has liberated me in so many ways, and I feel very rewarded by this work.”

Photographer: Norman Jean Roy
Stylist: Law Roach
Writer: Juliana Ukiomogbe
Hair: Vernon François
Makeup: Nick Barose
Manicure: Bagir K
[Photo Credit: Norman Jean Roy for ELLE Magazine]

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