Lupita Nyong'o mourns death of 15-year-old 'Queen of Katwe' co-star Nikita Pearl Waligwa

Lupita Nyong'o is mourning her 15-year-old "Queen of Katwe" co-star, Nikita Pearl Waligwa, who died over the weekend in Uganda. 

Waligwa appeared in the 2016 Disney film about a local chess prodigy along with Nyong'o, who played the main character's mother. Waligwa played a memorable supporting role. 

"It is with great sadness that I post about the passing of Nikita Waligwa, the sweet, warm, talented girl whom I worked with on the film, 'Queen Of Katwe,'" Nyong'o wrote Sunday on Instagram. "She played Gloria with such vibrancy. In her real life she had the enormous challenge of battling brain cancer. My thoughts and prayers are with her family and community as they come to terms with having to say goodbye so soon. May she truly rest in piece (sic). May it be well with her soul."

Nyongo's post featured a still of Waligwa from the film, overlayed with her standout line: "In chess, the small one can become the big one." 

Waligwa died Saturday at a hospital near the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The cause was a brain tumor, according to the girls’ secondary school she had attended since 2018.

She was “a darling to many,” Gayaza High School said on Twitter. Local media reported that Waligwa had been in and out of hospital with a recurring brain tumor and had previously received treatment, including surgery, in India.

Tributes were coming in for her on social media as Ugandans expressed sadness and recalled her role in the 2016 movie directed by Mira Nair and filmed in Kampala.

“Queen of Katwe” follows the rise of Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi as a chess player amid grinding poverty in the Kampala slum of Katwe, with her single mother (Nyong'o) barely able to support her and her two siblings. Mutesi falls under the spell of an unassuming chess teacher (David Oyelowo) who encourages the teenager to learn the game despite the skepticism of her mother, who warns her not to dream big because “you will be disappointed.”

The film was received favorably in Uganda, where young people with no acting experience shared the limelight with stars like Academy Award winner Nyong’o. One of those Ugandans was Waligwa, who played Gloria, a chess player younger than Phiona who memorably said in the movie that in the game of chess “the small one can become the big one.”

Contributing: The Associated Press