Lupita Nyong’o Explains Her Breakup Announcement After Split From TV Host Ex Selema Masekela

Lupita Nyong’o just “wanted to be honest” with people when she went public with her split from Selema Masekela in October. Calling out “deception” in an Instagram breakup post and saying she wanted to “publicly dissociate” herself from “someone I can no longer trust,” the Black Panther actress, 41, now tells Glamour she has no regrets about how she handled things. 

“Honestly, the thought of having to update people one at a time was going to be harrowing,” Nyong’o told the outlet candidly, continuing, “I had made the choice to share the relationship with the world, and I wanted to make the choice to share the end of it with the world. I knew that announcing it or sharing it with the world would mean there would be a reverb and I would have to deal with the onset of that. … There is a time to be open and there’s a time not to be, and I chose that time to be open.”

The A Quiet Place: Day One star went public with her television host ex, 52, in December 2022. In October, after nearly two years together, Nyong’o took to Instagram with a lengthy statement about the end of her relationship. “I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception,” she wrote in part, adding that while she was tempted to “run into the shadows and hide” amid the split, “I am reminded that the magnitude of the pain I am feeling is equal to the measure of my capacity for love. And so, I am choosing to face the pain, cultivating the courage to meet my life exactly as it is, and trusting that this too shall pass.”

That same month, the Oscar-winning actress was linked with Joshua Jackson. The Dawson’s Creek alum, 45, was first spotted by Nyong’o’s side at Janelle Monáe’s “The Age of Pleasure” concert, and the two would go on to confirm their romance in December, holding hands while taking a walk together in Joshua Tree, Calif. 

Neither Nyong’o nor Jackson have publicly addressed their relationship, and the 12 Years a Slave actress told Glamour she doesn’t plan on being as open with her private life in the future as she was with her last relationship. “I’m very happy with what I did, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to share that part of myself anymore,” she told the magazine.