Lupita Nyong’o has spent this year playing Helen of Troy, the woman whose love life launched a thousand ships, and the irony is that her own love life has gone quiet. When we first wrote this page in February 2023, she had just gone Instagram official with a new boyfriend and the internet was still sure she had once dated Janelle Monáe. Neither part of that story held. Here is where things actually stand, with the receipts.
Must know about Lupita Nyong’o
Lupita Amondi Nyong’o was born in Mexico City on March 1, 1983, and grew up in Kenya, where her parents are from; she is 43 now. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, is an academic and politician, and the family ran on education. She studied at the Yale School of Drama, and in her final year she was cast as Patsey in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, a film Brad Pitt produced.
It was her first feature film. Before that there was student theater, a couple of short films and a stint as a production assistant. The role won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2014, which is the kind of debut that makes the rest of us feel slow about our first jobs.
Co-stars, chemistry and the rumor mill
Ever since, every leading man has been treated as a suspect. After 12 Years a Slave, fans speculated about her and Michael Fassbender, who played the cruel plantation owner opposite her; neither ever said there was anything beyond work. In 2018 Black Panther put her opposite Michael B. Jordan, and the two promoting the film together was enough to restart the chatter. My read: audiences confuse good acting with a confession, and Nyong’o keeps being punished for doing her job well.
The most persistent rumor was Jared Leto, her fellow Oscar winner from the 2014 ceremony. In a 2024 interview with Glamour she said she “didn’t love” the speculation because “it was drawing attention away from the work”, and that the two are still friends.
Janelle Monáe: friends, says Lupita
The old headline on this page promised an “affair with a woman”. That was a rumor, not a fact. Nyong’o and Monáe met at the 2014 Met Gala, where Monáe put her number into Nyong’o’s phone and said, “Let’s stay in touch.” In 2023, speaking to Rolling Stone for Monáe’s cover story, Nyong’o said she “was not surprised” by the gossip: “She has magnetism that they were obviously picking up on.” She added, “I don’t mind being associated with her in any capacity.” Graceful, and not a confession, so we have stopped treating it as one.
Selema Masekela: from “We just click” to heartbreak
In December 2022 Nyong’o posted a finger-snapping video with Selema Masekela, the TV host, sports commentator and son of South African jazz great Hugh Masekela, captioned “We just click!” He posted the same clip: “Hearts are synched. My whole and actual love @lupitanyongo.”
It did not last. On October 19, 2023, she wrote on Instagram that she needed to “publicly dissociate myself from someone I can no longer trust”, adding, “I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception.” She never explained the deception, and I think she owes no one a footnote. Later she said she had chosen to share the start of the relationship publicly, so she wanted to share the end publicly too. That is a rare kind of consistency in Hollywood.
Joshua Jackson, and then the cat
The day before that post, she had been photographed with actor Joshua Jackson at a Janelle Monáe concert in Los Angeles (Monáe, once again, at the center of things without trying). Jackson had recently separated from Jodie Turner-Smith, and over the following months the two were seen together often enough that the press treated them as a couple.
By October 2024 it was over. Asked by Harper’s Bazaar UK about romance, Nyong’o talked about her cat, Yoyo: “My love for my cat is singular. If I’m ever so lucky to be in a romantic relationship again, it’ll be because of him.” After the Masekela split, she said, “I was ready to shut that door and lock it and bolt it. He has ensured that my heart remains open.” I have read many celebrity breakup statements. This is the only one that credits a pet, and it is the most honest of the lot.
Who is Lupita Nyong’o dating in 2026?
As far as the public record goes, nobody. She has not announced a new partner since the Jackson split, and she said in 2024 that she would share less of her private life online. What she has shared is work: Viola in the free Twelfth Night at Shakespeare in the Park in summer 2025, opposite her real brother Junior Nyong’o as her twin Sebastian, and then Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which opened on July 17, 2026, and passed $1.1 billion worldwide. She plays Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra. To the online backlash over the casting she told Elle, “You can’t perform beauty,” and that she was not spending her time thinking of a defense.
My take
Ten years of rumors gave her a co-star romance with almost every man she stood next to and one with a woman she simply admired. The two relationships she actually chose to make public, she announced herself and ended herself, in her own words. Helen of Troy got a war out of her love life. Lupita got a cat and a billion-dollar summer, and I think she got the better deal.
Sources
- Lupita Nyong’o on Instagram, September 2026
- Lupita Nyong’o on Instagram (@lupitanyongo)
- ET: Lupita Nyong’o reveals she’s dating TV host Selema Masekela
- Marie Claire: Lupita Nyong’o on the split from Selema Masekela, “love extinguished by deception”
- TODAY: Lupita Nyong’o addresses rumors she and Janelle Monáe were romantically involved (Rolling Stone interview)
- ET: Lupita Nyong’o on the Jared Leto rumors (Glamour, 2024)
- Pretoria News: Lupita Nyong’o opens up about breakup with Joshua Jackson (Harper’s Bazaar UK)
- HOLA!: Lupita Nyong’o’s split from Selema Masekela and outing with Joshua Jackson
- Black Film and TV: Twelfth Night cast at Shakespeare in the Park
- TheWrap: Lupita Nyong’o responds to The Odyssey casting backlash
- The Hollywood Reporter: The Odyssey box office opening
- NME: The Odyssey is now Christopher Nolan’s most successful film
