Lupita Nyong’o is almost famous.
Starring in director Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” out Friday, the actress has given one of the most buzzedabout, gutwrenching performances of the year as the cotton-picking plantation slave Patsey. All signs point to an Oscar nomination, but for now, Nyong’o is enough of a nobody that the employees of Fort Greene’s French bistro Chez Oskar don’t mind asking her to move her outside table — it’s blocking the cellar door.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” she murmurs, holding her glass of water as she helps scoot the table out from underneath the canopy.
Nyong’o, 30, makes her bigscreen debut with “12 Years,” a true story based on the autobiography of a free black man in the pre-Civil War era who was captured into slavery for a dozen years. Given the subject matter, it’s not exactly a spoiler to say the character Nyong’o plays is the victim of cringe-inducing brutality in the form of both lashes and rape. Her memorable moments of extreme desperation and sorrow are not easy to erase from memory, but it’s the slow, heavy grind of pain she carries in her piercing eyes that lingers with audiences days later.
The prim, petite Nyong’o was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents and grew up primarily in Kenya, but now she calls New York home.
Within 10 days of completing filming “12 Years,” Nyong’o moved to Brooklyn, because she has more of a professional and social network here. These days, she spends time with pals at spots like Fort Greene’s Madiba, her favorite restaurant to get fries. She also recently started a book club.
There’s no fiancé or child yet, despite what you may read on Wikipedia. When informed that much of the Internet believes she has a 3-year-old daughter with someone named DJ Kafi, her jaw drops.
“That’s kind of scary,” she says, laughing and noting she’s never heard of him. “He’s hitting on me in this way. Wrong order of things, DJ Kafi!”
The actress may not be planning to become a mother anytime soon, but she’s spending plenty of time with her own mom, who is in town for the movie premiere. Nyong’o says the visit made her realize how much of a New Yorker she’s become.
“I’ve had to zone out more, like on the subway,” she says. “You have to zone out, or you stand the risk of being the target of something weird.”
Nyong’o came stateside 10 years ago to study at Hampshire College, but got her first job in film on summer break in Nairobi, as a production runner on the set of “The Constant Gardener.”
“Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me,” says Nyong’o between bites of an omelette. “I was having lunch with Ralph on set, and he asked me, ‘So what is it you want to do?’ I very shyly, timidly admitted that I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and he said, ‘Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do — only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.’ ”
She couldn’t. Nyong’o graduated with a documentary thesis, “In My Genes,” about a Kenyan woman with albinism, and it opened the New York African Film Festival in 2010. But filmmaking wasn’t her true love.
She landed a role in “Shuga,” a Kenyan MTV drama that made her a celebrity there, then snagged a coveted spot at the hypercompetitive Yale School of Drama.
“I remember her looking particularly wonderful on camera,” says Ellen Novack, Nyong’o’s professor. “The fact she got such a wonderful part is one thing. The fact she stepped up and gave more than what was required is another.”
Novack helped Nyong’o find a manager, and Nyong’o ended up winning over director Steve Mc- Queen for her first big role three weeks before graduating in May.
“I had to go about [the audition] as I’d been trained to go about it,” says Nyong’o. “This is your opportunity to have this role for a day, for 10 minutes. Just do it like you have it, and use the audition as a rehearsal.”
Nyong’o credits McQueen for allowing her to experiment and develop Patsey, such as when she suggested Patsey’s cotton-picking fingers might allow her to make corn-husk dolls when not in the field. McQueen had the art department supply her with husks right away.
As a result of the film’s heavy, serious subject matter, Nyong’o says it was important to connect with her fellow actors — such as Michael Fassbender, whose character, Edwin Epps, rapes her.
“After scenes like that, we’d go and break bread together,” she says. “We’d go dancing, we went gokarting and [did] paintball and really enjoyed each other. We were in it together at the end of the day, even if our characters are at such odds.”
The mood on set, then, was not always so dark. Lupita pulls out her phone to play a Songify (the app that auto-tunes speech into song) of herself, Fassbender, Andy Dylan (Treach) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (the titular slave, Solomon) using “12 Years” lines such as “40, 50, 150 lashes — that’s scripture” to create a techno song.
“I was like, this should be in the DVD extras. But it might not be appropriate,” she says, laughing.
She adds, “We kind of owed it to the people we were bringing back to life to enjoy our freedom.”
Next for Nyong’o is a role as a flight attendant in the action flick “Non-Stop,” in theaters in February. And as for her personal life?
“I need to work on meeting DJ Kafi — that’s what I need to do!” she says.