Entertainment Weekly Chadwick Boseman

By Meredith Corporation

Before he elevated Black Panther into an inspirational and internationally beloved big screen superstar, Chadwick Boseman had long been delivering roles defined by passion and intensity, including starring turns as James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and Jackie Robinson in 42, which thrust him into leading-man status in 2013. Then, in 2016 when he took on the role of T’Challa/The Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in 2018 when he headlined the blockbuster film Black Panther his popularity exploded. Black Panther would go on to become one of the highest-grossing films of all time and the only comic-book movie nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. It inspired and excited children around the world, shattering stereotypes who a superhero could be. This commemorative edition from Entertainment Weekly celebrates the life and career of Boseman, looking back at his major roles through photos and essays, with remembrances from co-stars and colleagues, the legacy of Black Panther, and much more, this is a tribute to an enormous talent gone too soon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meredith Corporation
• Release date: Sep 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781547856275

Book preview

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1976–2020

A TRUE SUPERHERO

In an astonishing seven-year run, Chadwick Boseman went from unknown actor to top box office star in Black Panther. through much of that too-brief journey he was quietly fighting for his life, letting fans see only his inspiring portrayals of icons real and imagined. BY ALLISON ADATO

I always saw myself behind the scenes, Boseman said in 2017. As for his unexpected stardom, he explained, I haven’t chosen this path, the path chose me.

AUTUMN 2011: CHADWICK BOSEMAN, THEN A LITTLE-KNOWN 35-YEAR-old actor, walked into Jackie Robinson Stadium at UCLA, where, as part of a film audition, he would need to show off enough athleticism to convincingly portray the baseball great for whom the arena was named. At the time, Boseman had only one movie credit to his name, and his Little League days in South Carolina were a ways back. Sure, a moonshot home run could be added to the movie digitally, but it would be up to Boseman to bring to believable life this revered sports and civil rights hero: the first Black man to play in modern Major League Baseball. If the actor, angling for his debut leading role, wasn’t nervous enough, the filmmakers made sure to remind him of all that was at stake. ‘Do you realize how big this is?’ Boseman would later recall them asking. He recounted that high-pressure day with a laugh—because of course he got the part—and added that as the filmmakers spoke, they had pointed out to him the bronze statue of Jackie Robinson, casting a shadow outside the stadium.

As a country, we’ve been thinking a lot about statues lately: Who deserves them? When is it time to topple them and change what our pantheon looks like? The summer of 2020—marked by social upheaval and racial reckoning, devoid of new blockbuster action films because of a global pandemic—drew to a close with shocking and tragic news. On

Aug. 28 Chadwick Boseman, the actor best known for playing the title role in Black Panther, the most acclaimed, successful solo superhero film since Hollywood started making them, died at age 43. The cause was colon cancer, which he had fought privately for four years. The death left even close friends reeling. Absolutely devastating, said Kevin Feige, Marvel’s chief creative officer. He was as smart and kind and powerful and strong as any person he portrayed.

In his too-short life, Boseman had frequent opportunity to think about the kind of men that we honor with tributes in metal or stone: towering figures such as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (whose sculpted likeness graces the Maryland State House) and music pioneer James Brown (bronze, in his hometown of Augusta, Ga.). Following 42, Boseman portrayed both Marshall and Brown, his performances strikingly unburdened by the weight of his subjects’ legacies. It’s not like I’m necessarily looking [to play] important Black figures, Boseman told EW in 2017. But he built a reputation for understanding the person off the pedestal.

Those historical dramas turned out to have been good preparation for what would be the defining role of his career: T’Challa, king of the fictional African nation Wakanda, aka the sleek superhero Black Panther. Here his challenge was to make believable an icon formed in the two-dimensional world of comic books. Bringing Marvel’s Stan Lee-Jack Kirby creation to the screen could well have caused Boseman more anxiety than wrestling with actual lives. In the earlier biopics, he had only to act the part of pioneering cultural figures. First Black player in the Majors, first Black Supreme Court Justice. . . . Now, as he stepped into the armor of American comics’ first major Black superhero, he was positioned to become a pioneer himself.

With director Ryan Coogler and an electrifying cast that included Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, and Angela Bassett, Boseman more than met the challenge. A reluctant heir to his slain father’s throne, his T’Challa is conflicted, thoughtful and intelligent but also the agile, sexy, cool center of a thrilling popcorn flick.

It was a point of pride for the filmmakers and for Black fans that this first Marvel movie with a predominantly Black cast had blown up box office expectations and did so with ingenuity and joy, filling the screen with sci-fi splendor rooted in African cultures and peopling it with characters you’d want your kid dressing up as for Halloween. Come for the car chase, stay for the exploration of the sometimes uneasy relationship between Africans and their diaspora cousins. Black Panther, wrote EW critic Leah Greenblatt when it opened in 2018, "makes the radical case that a comic-book movie can actually have something meaningful—beyond boom or kapow or ‘America’—to say." It moved Oscar voters to do something unprecedented: put a comic-based action movie in the running for Best Picture.

For some in the audience, the film was an introduction to Boseman. They could be forgiven for mistaking the accent as real. (The decision to have T’Challa sound as if he were a native speaker of the South African Xhosa language had been Boseman’s.)

In fact, Chadwick Aaron Boseman was raised in Anderson, S.C., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lots of factories and blue-collar work is