HOLLYWOOD INSIDER

Remembering Chadwick Boseman and his wisdom

Published September 02, 2020 05:24 PM By JANET SUSAN R. NEPALES

Los Angeles — There are just some people who will make an impression on you, it is simply hard to forget them.

Such was Chadwick Boseman.

The 43-year-old actor from South Carolina passed away on Saturday

(Manila time) because of colon cancer. He played several historical figures from Jackie Robinson in “42” to James Brown in “Get on Up” to finally portraying his most memorable Marvel Comics character T’Challa/Black Panther in the 2018 blockbuster “Black Panther” which he headlined.

Unlike his Hollywood peers, Chadwick was shy and quiet. He did not try to call attention to himself, and instead, remained private.

He never talked about his colon cancer when he was diagnosed with it in 2016. He never talked about his marriage to singer Taylor Simone Ledward in 2015.

But there was something about Chadwick that drew our attention. He was very deep, always seemingly thinking. He was very smart. And he honestly cared about you, his friends, his community. He always radiated charisma and joy. He was loved by his peers.

As our way of honoring the man and his wisdom, we're sharing some excerpts of our conversations with Chadwick through the years.

 

Cinema has not been rich in telling stories about African culture. “Black Panther” relishes that opportunity. Having gone through this experience, what did you learn and what do you hope the youth will learn from this movie?

My experience in terms of African culture is one that, I am African-American, so therefore I have to reach for my connection to my ethnicity, the ethnic groups that I am from. Part of this experience for me was doing a DNA test, to find out what ethnic groups I'm from. I didn’t want this generalized idea of Africa and Wakanda, so I had done a test to find out.

[I learned] I was Limba, from Sierra Leone, from the last movie “Civil War” and with this experience, I went further and branched out. I asked other people in my family to take tests, like my elders. 

I found out that I was Mende, also from Sierra Leone, that I was Yorùbá from Nigeria. And it made some connections to Babaláwos, or priests, who were my teachers at certain points during this experience.

Before that, I had a romanticized view of what that is, because one, the DNA test didn’t exist, and this is a specific test, not through Ancestry.com, but through African ancestry. 

Because they have all of the cultures from the ethnic groups, which no other DNA test group has that, and that has not always existed. So, people of African descent in America, they couldn’t make those specific connections without DNA testing.  So before I had to go into books, so throughout my College years, I read about African cultures and I worked in an African bookstore.

 

So this experience allowed that, a closer rites of passage and theater and ritual have always been connected. So in this movie, you see us do a ritual, a rite of passage, a coordination of the king. 

That experience was not just one that I had, in playing a role, but even the extras that were on the set that were up in the mountains and caves of the waterfall scene, they also had that experience. They came back on, we shot that for weeks, and they came even though it was difficult for them to be up there for weeks. They came because they were experiencing this thing for the first time. So the African-American got disconnected in some cases too. So the beauty of this movie was that we got to share that with them and then share it also with the world.

How important is it for you to be vocal or not vocal in social and political issues?

I feel like it’s important at times to do it. I view myself as an artist, and I feel like my art at times is activism. Sometimes it’s important for you to speak out separate from that, and sometimes it’s important that your work speaks for itself. 

I think you have to be very mindful of when to do that, and when you should do it, because the more important thing is, on what stage is the activism most useful?

Sometimes it is more useful for people to see you step outside of your artistry and at all costs, make a statement whether it’s going to hurt your box office or not and there are certain moments where you should do that.

And a person that I respect very much who does that, and who I just spent some time with, is Danny Glover. I love who he is as an artist and an activist, I respect him very much for what he does.  And obviously Harry Belafonte, but Danny Glover just received an award for that at the Image Awards and I was able to spend a little time talking to him about why he does what he does and seeing him do it. 

 

I think in other moments, it’s important for you to let the work speak for itself, because you hurt the opportunity for that work to be on that stage if you do things ahead of time. So I think all of it is strategy and there is no one way to do it but as an artist, I feel like you have to be mindful of that, so that it has the right impact.

Do you remember the time in your life when you were first becoming aware of social injustice or any event that made you think that there was something that needs to be done where people need to stand up?

I would say my entire life, I feel like I have sort of felt that sense, from my parents, from my brothers, just my family members, there’s always been a sense. I am from the South, South Carolina, and so for my entire life, I have seen Confederate flags flying from trucks and Confederate flag license plates. 

I have seen my family members stopped by police for no reason, and I saw somebody try to run my mom off the road in a truck. So it’s always been a thing of how do you deal with this situation? And do you respond directly and violently or do you respond peacefully, or do you respond spiritually or consciously? All of those things have always been a question. 

I would say that it formally, probably happened when I went to Howard (University).  There’s always going to be protests when you are on a college environment. So while there, there were a number of police shootings. There was a student who was killed by an off-duty cop while we were at Howard and we marched to the justice department.  And that was probably the first time I ran into Al Sharpton in the midst of a protest. 

So I can’t really name a specific point because I think it has always been part of my life because injustice has always been present.

Why is "Marshall" very significant now and how do you feel as a Black man in this political climate? What kind of challenges do you have and how do you personally feel about them?

The funny thing about it was, at one point we were going to put this movie out last year, and the producers were rushing because we shot it during Summer of 2016, and they were rushing to get it out and get it done. And it wasn’t ready yet. Because the thought was, they wanted to screen it at the White House, during the Obama Administration. 

I think it’s fitting that we have this movie at this time. I am not happy for the current conditions that we are in, but it is great that this movie, which for me was important about it, is that it gives you a sense of hope and it’s not a movie that is sort of — I will call some movies, they are poverty porn, or they are brutal porn, and they want you to feel bad about a situation and you leave the movie feeling bad.

 

This movie points to what the issues are, but I think it allows to laugh, it allows you to cry, it allows to feel and go through all the myriad of emotions but at the same time, you leave it saying these two men came together and did something positive, to better the situation, to better their surrounding and to better the country. 

So I think this movie is important, especially how it affects you when you leave. And enough can’t be said about that. And you can see things bubbling up now in our society that are like white supremacy in Charlottesville. You see this movie and you go there it is, it’s the same thing. 

Or we are possibly, depending upon how diplomatic how we can be as opposed to responsive and aggressive, it’s a chance that we are at the edge of war, I am talking about right now.

So this movie is prior to the U.S. taking a stand and deciding that they were going to enter World War II, so the thing about this movie is that it’s all about taking a stand for something. 

Thurgood Marshall’s effect on Sam Friedman is basically saying what are you living for, what is important in your life? And we are all sort of at that same place right now where you can’t really sugar coat or you can’t avoid certain questions and you have to say this is where I stand on this. And that is why it is topical. And regarding that song I mentioned earlier, it’s going to take longer. It was a great find and I lost it.

How was your upbringing and who inspired you?

My father, we weren’t rich, but he worked odd hours and he did everything that he could to make sure that we had the things that we needed, not everything we wanted, but everything that we needed. So that if we were inspired to do something, he wanted to make sure that he had things in place so that we could do those things. 

And my mother, she was the type of person who made sure that our minds were not idle. So even when we weren’t in school, I had to read a certain number of books. And I would lie at times and say I had read books when I hadn’t read them. But she was smart enough to know better and would catch me on those lies, until at a certain point, I bought into that idea of I have to do work outside of school. 

And so I would say that they both did it and I don’t have to look outside of my parents for two people that basically said, here’s what I aspire for you to do, and knowing that those ideas would take me to something that maybe they would have never thought of. 

I am from Anderson, South Carolina, and there’s no way a kid from Anderson, South Carolina thinks that he could come to Hollywood and become a movie star. That’s not even in this perspective, this trajectory, it’s not even possible. But because they were like, I want to get behind whatever you want to do, it was a possibility.

 

Do you still play basketball?

I did, but now, I don’t have time to play. I have time to watch it.  Basketball is one of those sports where it doesn’t matter if you have been fighting, if you have been running marathons, if you have been doing triathlons. It’s one of those sports that if you do it and you haven’t been doing it, you are going to get hurt. So you are going to twist that ankle, sprain a knee, break your fingers, so because a lot of my roles have been very physical or athletic, I had to give up basketball. I had to give it up, because I didn’t want basketball to take me away, from being able to put me out for a month or two where I couldn’t train for “42,” which was an athletic movie and “Get on Up” was an extremely athletic movie, and “Draft Day” was an athletic movie. So all those things, and this obviously has a physical, so this has become a life so basketball is retired.

Who are the heroes in your life?

My hero in my life right now — when you say it, it makes me think of many people, but it’s my parents. To this day, I just look at my mom, she is calm under pressure, super calm under pressure, she was a nurse. So there would be times where I would go to her office after school when I was a little boy and I would see someone go into duress and see them rushed to the hospital and they would have me often in the lunchroom or whatever, but I would still see how calm she was in those situations.  And I would see how calm she would be when family members were under duress and we have a big family.  So she has always shown like this is what it’s like for you to act in your particular skill set when there is pressure.

And I think my father’s heart is just really, really big and it’s bigger than most men. And so his heart is what I aspire to and what I love.  So as many famous people that I encounter and as many historical figures that I have played, there’s nobody that has that attribute or those attributes that I see in them. — LA, GMA News

View on GMA News