Lupita and Junior Nyong’o, ‘Twelfth Night’ Is Child’s Play
About a year ago, Junior Nyong’o received a call from Saheem Ali, associate artistic director of the Public Theater and a family friend. Fresh out of drama school, Junior was offered the role of Sebastian in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which would reopen the renovated Delacorte Theater in Central Park. He immediately said yes, but had one question: who would play his twin sister, Viola?
A woman’s voice chimed in on the line — “Meeeeeee!” It was Lupita Nyong’o. “I kind of freaked out,” Junior recalled. The siblings would be playing Shakespeare’s twins together, something they had never done before.
Though they rarely rehearsed side by side, the play’s structure ultimately brings Sebastian and Viola together in an emotional reunion. At one rehearsal, they worked through how to stage it. “I want to hold your face,” Junior said. “I like it,” Lupita replied, “but I want to hold your face.” That intimacy came naturally. “I don’t need to do any of that work,” Lupita later reflected. “Because the bond is built.”
The Nyong’os grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, the youngest and the second eldest of five siblings. Despite a decade between them, they were close. Lupita confessed to lighthearted bullying, but she and Junior were unique in their shared love for make-believe. Their father, a Shakespeare enthusiast, often recited lines at home, and both siblings were introduced to theater early.
Lupita acted in Romeo and Juliet at 14, meeting Ali in the process. Still, her parents were cautious about acting as a career, and she pursued it seriously only after college. Junior, meanwhile, performed in school plays and excelled at music, but eventually chose drama, reasoning: “I loved music too much to suffer for it, whereas I could suffer for acting.”
Her path led to Yale, an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave, and starring roles in Black Panther and Us. Junior earned his MFA from UC San Diego in 2023. Though he often joined her on red carpets, they had never acted together. Ali, who long hoped to unite them onstage, finally saw the chance with Twelfth Night.
The production even incorporated Swahili, a language shared by the three. Sebastian and Viola, written as accidental immigrants, gained an added cultural resonance. “It returns us home,” Junior said. Lupita admitted to initial nerves, worried she’d treat her brother more like family than a peer, but over dinner they set ground rules for collaboration.
For both, Twelfth Night carried personal meaning. Lupita adored it since childhood, drawn to its blend of comedy and melancholy, while Junior had already acted in it twice, once even modeling a character’s movements on his sister. Now, to play twins, they studied each other’s gestures, often on subway rides to and from rehearsals.
Their resemblance was strengthened by Lupita cutting her hair to match her brother’s. “A wig at the Delacorte in August? No,” she joked. Even without identical looks, she believed their real sibling bond would carry the performance.
In rehearsal, they found common ground as actors — both attentive to text, both generous with colleagues. Junior admired his sister’s persistence; she, in turn, loved seeing him hold his own alongside veterans like Sandra Oh. The hardest moment, Lupita said, was imagining her brother’s death in the opening scenes. “It just makes it deeper,” she admitted.
Director Ali saw their reunion scene as the heart of the play. “Now I get to watch Junior, for the first time, meet and match his sister in such a beautiful way,” he said. During rehearsal, the two first played the moment with tears, then decided to emphasize joy instead, embracing and sharing a secret handshake.
For Lupita and Junior Nyong’o, Twelfth Night is more than Shakespearean comedy. It is a celebration of their shared history, their bond as siblings, and their growth as artists finally standing together onstage.
