Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is not just another Marvel movie – it is a painful and poignant tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, from a cast and director (Ryan Coogler) who were like family to him. The rollout for Wakanda Forever has been meticulously precise in how it addresses Boseman’s passing, including how the cast discusses it (or not) in interviews. However, a new feature in Variety seems to be where Coogler and some of Black Panther 2‘s biggest stars (Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett), opened up about the falling into the dark tunnel of grief and running together toward the light of creating a sequel Chadwick could be proud of.
During the interview, Letitia Wright (who plays Princess Shuri) revealed the truly painful and traumatic way she personally learned about Chadwick Boseman’s death: Waking up to the words “My condolences” on her phone in a text message from a friend she had been out with the night before: “But he wasn’t clear about what he was saying ‘My condolences’ for,” Wright explained. “So I was just like, ‘My condolences’ for what? What is this guy talking about?”
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As the messages and condolences came flooding in, Wright says she could not bring herself to accept the reality of the situation, describing herself as thinking “Is someone trying to play a joke on me? This is not a good joke. This is not OK. And I just did the first thing that anybody would do: I called Chad.” She also texted him with: “Hey Bro, it’s Tish. Please pick up.”
With no answer, Wright moved on to contacting Black Panther actor Daniel Kaluuya, who tried to tell her first-hand that Boseman was gone, causing Wright to full break from reality at that moment:
“I was like, ‘Yo, I think everybody’s tripping right now,” she recalled telling Kaluuya. “I’m giving you like five seconds to tell me that this is not real.’ He was super silent. I was like, ‘OK, fine, if you’re not gonna tell me, I’m going to continue calling Chad until he picks up.’”
It was when Wright kept incesently trying to call Boseman that Kaluuya had to step in and force her to accept what was happening, by informing her that Chadwick Boseman’s family had made the official announcement confirming his death. After it was cemented as reality, Letitia Wright says the “downward spiral” of grief was all too real for her – especially since Chadwick died during the height of the COVID Pandemic (in August 2020), making travel to his funeral all but impossible for actors like Wright or Kaluuya, who are from the UK:
“It haunted me for months that I couldn’t say goodbye to him or be around my ‘Black Panther’ family to share in that moment,” Wright recalls. “I kind of had to do that by myself. Like, bless Daniel — he came to see me and stuff. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to book a flight that day.”
In the end, it was also strange for Wright, Ryan Coogler, and the rest of the Black Panther family to wrestle with having known Chadwick Boseman so well, yet knowing nothing about the cancer he had been fighting since they made the first film:
“I didn’t put the dots together,” Wright admitted. “Bro was very private. He wanted to always protect us. That’s all I can say.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever debuts in theaters worldwide this weekend.
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