When Chadwick Boseman died in 2020, the world mourned his loss.
Boseman’s death at age 43 from colon cancer, a battle he kept private, came as a shock to those who loved him, whether they knew him directly or not.
Because even for those who only caught a glimpse of him on a screen or in an interview, Boseman had a grace and decency that breathed through every pore.
As the Marvel character T’Challa, Boseman was a champion for legions of children (and adults) who felt the empowering impact of his performance as a black superhero. As his own person, Boseman fed his compassion into his art, imbuing his characters with humanity.
For its Black Panther co-stars, they lost their family.
“When he died, my world fell apart for a while,” Black Panther actor Lupita Nyong’o told news.com.au. “He was a dear friend.”
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Nyong’o and the Black Panther clan reunited for the sequel Wakanda forever 10 months after Boseman’s death, and his absence was sorely felt. But it was also a chance for them to grieve collectively.
“It was surreal. It was hard,” Nyong’o recalled. “It was helpful to be with the main cast who had been through the same thing. We’d all been in the first one Black Panther film together and we all dealt with his loss together in this film.
“Coming to the set was surreal, but it was also therapeutic. When he died, we were in lockdown due to covid and many of us were in isolation when we found out. I was all alone when I found out. So we never got a chance to pity each other and cry together.
“The experience really taught me why funerals are so important and why this period of coming together to mourn someone’s death is so important. It’s one of the ways we process loss.
“For us, to return to”Wakanda“, even though it was a delayed place to go through our pain, it was the right place because it was the place where we had formed these bonds with him, to be able to come back together in that space and process what we had lost. , we celebrate the life we knew and enjoyed.”
Wakanda forever is the first live-action character that Nyong’o reprized in a sequel (she voiced Maz Kanata in three Star Wars films and a television series). The experience of recapturing a character he portrayed four years ago was a new challenge.
Nyong’o said that she had to think about what choices she had made about Nakia in the first film, but that ultimately Nakia’s journey mirrored her own.
“A character grows as much as you do, and you come to the character at a different time in your life,” he explained. “Honestly, I think every character comes from a part of me, my being informs and affects the character.
“I kept thinking about how Nakia was T’Challa’s love interest. So what impact does that have on her? It really informed how I approached the character because I understood the pain firsthand.
“I was looking a lot at his life and what he stood for, and his work ethic, and one of the things that was my mantra was something that his wife Simone said at his funeral. She said that Chad he was a man who took his time but didn’t waste it.
“That was something I kept thinking, ‘Take your time, but don’t waste your time.’ That really helped me approach this process with honesty and openness. I was so happy I was alive to do – because I know that I had been looking forward to him and he didn’t get to be there. I wanted to be as present as possible in his honor.
“All of us who knew him, we say his name, that’s how we keep his legacy alive.”
Nyong’o said this Wakanda foreverThe choice to address Boseman’s death and wrap it up and the emotional impact it has directly on the story continues that legacy.
“We’re saying Chadwick was here, he left an impact and we won’t forget him.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now in theaters