“Chadwick’s smile was big like a Cheshire cat, but when he became T’Challa, the smile got small — you wouldn’t see his teeth,” BlackPanther director Ryan Coogler says. “[Letitia Wright] was the only actor who would get him to smile as Chad.”
, followed by headlines alleging that she was unvaccinated for COVID-19.
No one who worked on “Black Panther” — not Coogler or Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, not co-stars Wright,, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o or Winston Duke — had any idea that the film’s preternaturally gifted star had been battling colon cancer since he was diagnosed in 2016. Just a tiny circle of people knew the full extent of Boseman’s illness, even as he imbued his character, T’Challa, with an incorruptible strength as the leader of Wakanda.
Wright and Bassett, delightful supporting performers in the first film, found themselves thrust into the sequel’s central relationship. The introduction of the aquatic Mesoamerican civilization of Talokan meant the actors had to learn how to free dive, while the story — involving a fateful clash with Talokan’s superhuman ruler, Namor — plunged both women into far deeper and more turbulent emotional waters, all while mourning Boseman on camera and off.
Sometimes, though, there aren’t any words to say at all. By the summer of 2020, Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole had amassed a rough screenplay for the “Black Panther” sequel and sent it to Boseman for his feedback. He reaches for a reporter’s notebook on the table and writes, essentially, this: He was too tired to read it.Coogler rubs his eyes, puts his glasses on and collects himself. “For us on that movie, the interpersonal and the professional are fused together, which happens sometimes,” he says. “It’s a human thing. We caught it with the cameras.”
Eventually, Wright called her “Black Panther” cast mate Daniel Kaluuya, who was also on lockdown in London. “Chadwick’s smile was big like a Cheshire cat, but when he became T’Challa, the smile got small — you wouldn’t see his teeth,” Coogler says. “She was the only actor who would get him to smile as Chad.” Boseman made no secret that Shuri was his favorite character, and, in turn, Wright saw Boseman as a surrogate brother.
But it took several more weeks and, as Feige puts it, “a lot of soul searching” before he, Coogler and producer Nate Moore were able to bring themselves to discuss what to do with the “Black Panther” sequel. An initial discomfort with the idea of moving forward without Boseman was swiftly replaced by an even firmer conviction that they needed to do it.“He was such a part of the fabric of that character in that world because he helped us build it,” Moore says.
“Where we started was this idea of who would be the most affected by his loss,” Coogler says. “Shuri had never known a day without him. He’d always been there, so she would be the most unmoored by him passing away.” With Bassett, Coogler was more direct, telling her how “important and vital” Queen Ramonda’s relationship with Shuri was to his new conception of the film. “Almost to the point that I was going to get a complex, like, ‘Am I going to be able to deliver what you’re asking for?’” Bassett recalls with a laugh. “She had to be strong. She had to be a mother. She had to be a leader. He was just throwing all of this at me.
“It’s a process that’s still living and breathing — it’s not etched in stone, even as we began to shoot, even on the day of shooting,” Bassett says. “You just have to go with the flow.” “You don’t do these kinds of projects for the awards,” she says. “I appreciate the buzz on it, because I know that it doesn’t really come from these big superhero movie franchises.”
“It clipped a median and sheared the bike off, and it tumbled,” Moore says. Wright was hospitalized with a fractured shoulder and a concussion, among other injuries. Both Feige and Coogler flew to Boston to see Wright in the hospital. “I just remember wanting to finish my film, man,” she says. “I think that was one of the first things I said to Ryan. And he was like, ‘Tish, you need to recover.’”
“It’s not a question we asked of anybody, to be quite honest,” Moore says. “She never talked about her views either way. We read the stories that I would argue were unfair, because I don’t know where they’re coming from. As someone who literally is on set next to the monitor all the time, I feel like I would have heard it.”asked Wright about the reports surrounding her vaccination status, her publicist interrupted the call to insist the interview move on to the next question.
Instead, Coogler says he’s focused on getting “Wakanda Forever” out into the world, which he sees as his final obligation as a filmmaker. “It’s very difficult because you’re exhausted and emotionally spent, and I’m trying to give it all my full attention,” he says. “After that, I’ll figure out what’s going on with me. But I think it’s going to be some rest and family time.”
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