Chadwick Boseman Explains How ‘Black Panther’ Made Him More Idealistic

It goes without saying that Black Panther is one of the most successful movies of the year, making an obscene amount of money for Marvel Studios at the box office and catapulting Chadwick Boseman into the limelight.

But the film was also a profound experience for the actor, who recently admitted playing T’Challa made him more idealistic. Boseman went into detail while speaking on the Hollywood Reporter’s actors roundtable.

“For me it was the fact that as a person of African descent, this searching for what my real culture is, living that and believing that space and showing that on screen and just being able to give that to an audience, to say that ‘I know so much about my past, I know so much about my history.’ Which, as a as an African-American, I’ve searched for that my entire life. But to be a person that didn’t have to search for it.”

Boseman addressed the fact that many black people growing up in the United States don’t have detailed histories they can look up, pointing back to which country their families came from.

“Having that is something that you’re like, ‘Oh not only do I know, but I value it,’ like there’s a certain patriotism to something that has never been lost. It’s ancient and being able to hold on to that it was something that throughout the movie, I was like, wow. The weight of that, it’s something that I have to convey to the world. Because you could do that movie and it’s a parody of that idea, and that is insulting. And so I think, for me, was constantly wanting to convey that this is real,” Boseman said.

“I never thought I would see a studio say, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna put the money behind this movie with … mostly a black cast.’ Sometimes we have, we as African-Americans, we have the black version and it’s never as good. They never put as much into it, and so it made me more idealistic and that’s aspirational for not just myself, but for other people. And not just in film but in other arenas.”

To say that Black Panther was cultural phenomenon would be an understatement, and it’s intriguing to hear about the profound impact it had on its star.

Fans will next be able to see Boseman reprise the role of the King of Wakanda when Avengers 4 premieres in theaters on May 3, 2019, but Marvel Studios is currently working on a sequel to Black Panther, though it does not yet have a release date.