THE FUSE

On the night of March 2, 2014, a 31-year-old who had barely appeared on a movie screen walked to the Oscars stage in a powder-blue gown and accepted the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Lupita Nyong'o had won for 12 Years a Slave, her first major film, playing the brutalized enslaved woman Patsey, and the speech she gave became instantly famous. No matter where you are from, she told the audience, your dreams are valid. A Kenyan-Mexican newcomer almost no one had heard of a year earlier had become, overnight, one of the most watched women in the world.