Lupita Nyong’o Confirms She’s Single Nearly A Year After Canoodling With Joshua Jackson
Lupita Nyong’o is officially single. She isn’t scorned by past heartbreak, and you have her cat, Yoyo, to thank.
The Oscar winner adopted her pet after her relationship with sports commentator Selema Masekela ended. “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,” she confessed to Harper’s Bazaar UK in a recent interview. “I was ready to shut that door and lock it and bolt it. He has ensured that my heart remains open.”
She later teased, “My family can’t get over it. My sisters are so disturbed every time I send them a picture of Yoyo. They’re like, oh my God, our sister has been stolen.’”
In October 2023, Nyong’o announced the breakup on Instagram. “It is necessary for me to share a personal truth and publicly dissociate myself from someone I can no longer trust… I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception […] Let’s face our pain so we don’t spread it,” she wrote.
However, that same day, romantic rumors about her and the freshly divorced Joshua Jackson began to surface. He was “heartbroken” over the dissolution of his marriage with actress Jodie Turner-Smith, whom he shares one child with. Yet, Jackson and Nyong’o confirmed their romance that December.
She never detailed what happened between her and Jackson, but won’t be publicizing future relationships so candidly. In regard to her split from Masekela, the Black Panther star told Harper’s Bazaar UK, “It can get toxic to beat yourself up about a past you can’t change, but it’s also an opportunity to learn about yourself. It’s hard enough to go through heartbreak privately. When the world has an image of you in relation to someone else, it prolongs the healing process because the memory is emblazoned in the public domain.”
Funny enough, Nyong’o was terrified of cats for years, but faced her fears while filming A Quiet Place: Day One. She was forced to do immersive therapy, which required her to stroke the animals for hours at a time, and now the 41-year-old is a proud #ChildlessCatLady.
