Nikita Pearl Waligwa a
young actress who starred in a Ugandan Disney movie about a chess prodigy has
reportedly died after battling health issues a few years earlier.
According to the
Ugandan news outlet, The Daily Monitor, Nikita recently passed away. While they
don’t say exactly how, the paper seems to link her death to a 2016 diagnosis which
found she had a tumor in her brain. Unclear if she was fighting full-blown
cancer.
Even more tragic the
Monitor says a funding campaign was started for Nikita to get treatment in
India, because local doctors were quoted as not having the proper equipment.
As for her acting
career, it appears she only starred in the one Disney flick, “Queen of
Katwe,” playing a friend of the actual chess prodigy, Phiona Mutesi.
It also featured Lupita Nyong’o and David
Oyelowo the film’s got a great Rotten Tomatoes score, critics loved it.
Nikita was only 15
years old.