Ryan Coogler calls Chadwick Boseman “Trailblazer”

• Chadwick Boseman’s contribution to the Black Panther series was much more significant.
• The late actor had a lot of worldbuilding to do.
• The actor read every script and attended every audition for the Marvel movie before his death.

It’s not simple to put together an entire world to make a movie come to life. When the movie isn’t even getting created, an actor is required to primarily conjure up the history of their character on their own, which makes the job even more challenging. Marvel wasn’t certain that Black Panther would happen when the late Chadwick Boseman was cast as Prince T’Challa in Captain America: Civil War, so Boseman had to fight for many aspects of a movie that might not materialise. In an interview with The Official Black Panther Podcast, director and screenwriter Ryan Coogler makes this revelation about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

In the interview, the creator of the Black Panther comic books, Coogler disclosed that Boseman’s contribution to the Black Panther series was much more significant than anyone outside of production could have imagined. The late actor had a lot of worldbuilding to do, according to the director, especially when you take into account that T’Challa wasn’t even a significant character in Civil War:

“His significance can’t be overstated. There really isn’t anything like him. Because he was cast before a director was hired for ‘Black Panther.’ Chad was hired for [‘Captain America: Civil War’], way before they knew for sure that ‘Black Panther’ was going to be a movie. He was hired onto a white movie. With white directors, white writers. Fortunately, Nate Moore [producer] was creative executive, [but] he was basically hired to be this African king, this super-iconic character from the comics… and he was basically there to bring life to the character, but what Chad was also doing… He was protecting us, before ‘us’ was even a thing. He was on set advocating for what Wakanda should be, and he was having very, very difficult conversations. Conversations that are not easy to have: ‘What is T’Challa gonna sound like?’ […] He was so good in that movie, and the decisions that he made were so amazing, that it seemed like T’Challa was always a thing when you watch [it]. He was out there having difficult conversations with the most prolific, the most powerful studio in the world. He was having hard conversations about what Wakanda was going to be. […] You talk about Marvel being ten steps ahead, Chad was thirty steps ahead of the game. In many ways, he was like a head of studio, in terms of being confident in what was going to work.”

Continuing the conversation, Coogler refers to Boseman as “a trailblazer,” adding that the actor read every script, attended every audition, and provided thoughtful comments for Black Panther. As the director explains it:

“He was a writer. He was a director. He was an African cultural historian, he knew Shakespeare, he knew it all. […] He brought a level of seriousness and earnestness, and he was more confident in me than I was in myself at that time.”

Boseman passed away in late 2020 from colon cancer. One of the highest-grossing films of 2020, Black Panther made over $1.3 billion globally. The completed script was revised following Boseman’s passing to account for the unfortunate circumstance and pay homage to the late actor’s contributions to the Marvel Universe. The Black Panther: Wakanda Forever cast members, including star Angela Bassett and Marvel mega-producer Kevin Feige, are interviewed on the The Official Black Panther Podcast, a program that anticipates the release of the upcoming Marvel film and honors its legacy.

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