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Int: You’ve become so popular that people talk about “the Lupita effect,” which includes everything from consumers running out to buy the lip gloss you’re using to designers casting more women of color on the runway. How do you react to that?
LN: I giggle. I just heard it for the first time. I’ve heard people talk about images in popular culture changing, and that makes me feel great, because it means that the little girl I was, once upon a time, has an image to instill in her that she is beautiful, that she is worthy—that she can… Until I saw people who looked like me, doing the things I wanted to, I wasn’t so sure it was a possibility. Seeing Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah in The Color Purple, it dawned on me: “Oh—I could be an actress!” We plant the seed of possibility.