LUPITA NYONG’O REVEALS HOW LA WILDFIRES NEARLY DESTROYED HER HOME

Oscar-winning actress and global style icon Lupita Nyong’o has shared how the devastating LA wildfires earlier this year shook her idea of safety and belonging.

Lupita’s Los Angeles home miraculously survived the flames, but the emotional damage ran deep. “One of the things that I’m grappling with now is a fear of overly identifying with a place as my home, because I live in Los Angeles, we just had those fires in the start of the year, and my neighbourhood was destroyed. Luckily, my house is still standing. But a place that seemed so safe to me is no longer that I can no longer claim that kind of safety with certainty,” she confessed. 

For Lupita, home isn’t just four walls. It’s the memories, the people, and the little pieces of life that travel with her. “Homes are extensions of ourselves. I carry myself to all these worlds that I occupy, and I find that in order for me to feel most at home, I want to reach for the things that remind me of the places I am not when I am in a new place. My home in Los Angeles is my latest home, and in it I have obviously pictures of people that make my life make sense from all over the world, and I have pieces of furniture and art and stuff like that that remind me of other homes that are not necessarily present in the moment.”

Before the fires, Lupita’s garden was her sanctuary. “one of the reasons why I wanted to move to the West Coast. In 2020 when the pandemic had us all sitting at home, I realised that my New York apartment did not have any outdoor space, and I felt so alone, despite the fact that I was surrounded by people, and so I spent six months in upstate New York on a property that had about 100 trees, and I felt way more at home and comforted by those 100 trees than I did by my stone apartment in New York.“ she recalled. 

Though the flames destroyed it, she finds inspiration in nature’s resilience, “One month after the fires, grass was already sprouting in my neighbourhood. Now, I’m looking forward to regrowing the garden and finding a new expression out there for nature.”