Lupita Nyong’o: ‘I Knew… I Was Going to be a Meme’ After Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars

Actor Lupita Nyong’o was seated directly behind Hollywood couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and after she witnessed the slap during the Oscars broadcast earlier this year, she said she “knew as soon as it was over that I was going to be a meme.”

In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever actor was speaking about the upcoming movie post-Chadwick Boseman. She opened up about being a part of a “media moment” in reference to the incident.

Her image was caught by cameras reacting to what transpired and then her realizing that she would be a part of the discussion based on how she reacted to it.

“Once the moment was over, I realized, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way all this transpired and I’m not in the shot,’” Nyong’o says with a laugh.

“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,” she told the media outlet.

Several months ago, Nyong’o, who has reprised her role as Nakia in the sequel to Marvel’s Black Panther, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about how she felt filming the latest movie without the leading actor, Boseman, who died in 2020 of colon cancer.

“It’s been a doozy of a few years for everybody. For us as a cast, having lost our king, Chadwick Boseman, that was a lot to process, and in many ways, we’re still processing it. When you lose someone, I don’t know when you stop missing them. And of course, we felt it so much, making this film without him.”

The movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is slated to debut on Nov. 11.