In the wake of Saturday’s extremely robust Virtuosos show, last night’s Lupita Nyong’o interview with Dave Karger seemed a little bit flat. Okay, not flat but rote. Fine but ho-hummish.

The Montecito Award recipient appeared last night, per SBIFF, in concert with the Martin Luther King holiday, and to re-hash her celebrated performance as “Red” in Jordan Peele‘s Us. Over-celebrated in my view, and you’ll notice that Lupita fervor died out after a brief December surge among critics groups. It began with her winning the Best Actress award from the NYFCC.

Lupita is a gifted, beautiful, grade-A actress, but it’s going to be hard to find another role as good as Patsey in 12 Years A Slave. It’s unfortunate that better roles don’t seem to be out there. Or aren’t being offered to her.

HE commentary on Nyongo’s NYFCC win for Best Actress: “Good as she was in Peele’s interesting if underwhelming horror flick, Lupita basically delivered an intelligent, first-rate, Jamie Lee Curtis-level scream-queen performance with a side order of raspy-voiced predator doppleganger.”