Black Panther actress Lupita Nyongo has finally come clean about her new man. Media Take Out confirmed that Lupita is dating former E! News correspondent Sal Madekela.
Here’s a pic that Lupita made, announcing their coupledom:
Selema “Sal” Mabena Masekela, 51, is an American television host, sports commentator, actor and singer.
Masekela was born in Los Angeles, the son of a Haitian mother and South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela. Masekela is also the older half-brother of Survivor: Cook Islands contestant Nathan Gonzalez. He was raised in Staten Island, New York in the same class with rapper Method Man and Carlsbad, California, where he attended Carlsbad High School. Masekela is the co-founder of Berkela Motion Pictures with Jason Bergh. When he was a teenager, Masekela’s upbringing brought him to Southern California, where he was first exposed to surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding
Lupita is the daughter of Kenyan politician Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, she was born in Mexico City, where her father was teaching, and was raised in Kenya from the age of three. She attended college in the United States, earning a bachelor’s degree in film and theatre studies from Hampshire College. She later began her career in Hollywood as a production assistant. In 2008, she made her acting debut with the short film East River and subsequently returned to Kenya to star in the television series Shuga (2009–2012). She then pursued a master’s degree in acting from the Yale School of Drama. Soon after her graduation, she had her first feature film role as Patsey in Steve McQueen’s biopic 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which she received critical acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Nyong’o made her Broadway debut as a teenage orphan in the play Eclipsed (2015), for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She went on to perform a motion capture role as Maz Kanata in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019) and a voice role as Raksha in The Jungle Book (2016). Nyong’o’s career progressed with her role as Nakia in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Black Panther (2018) and its sequel (2022) and her starring role in Jordan Peele’s horror film Us (2019).
Aside from acting, Nyong’o supports historic preservation. She is vocal about preventing sexual harassment, working for women’s and animal rights. In 2014, she was named the most beautiful woman by People. In 2019, Nyong’o wrote a children’s book named Sulwe, which became a number-one New York Times Best-Seller. She also received nominations for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator for narrating two episodes of the docu-series Serengeti. In 2020, Nyong’o was named one of Africa’s 50 Most Powerful Women by Forbes.
