Oscar Winner Mourns Marvel Star Chadwick Boseman

Considering that she appeared at a Screen Talk event to promote her latest film, the actor likely was not prepared to talk about Black Panther. However, the event she attended showed a clip of that hit Disney film in which Lupita Nyong’o and Chadwick Boseman’s characters were working together. This prompted her to reveal that she hasn’t rewatched that film since Boseman died because “The grief is the love, and no place to put it.”

When the organizers saw Lupita Nyong’o’s grieving reaction to the sight of Chadwick Boseman onscreen, they politely offered to skip to the next clip to spare her further pain. She declined the offer, saying, “I don’t want run away from the tears or the grief” and stating that “you just live with it.” She also took a rather philosophical view that her grief and her love surrounding that film are functionally inseparable: “That experience will never be separate from the love that was formed.” 

Lupita Nyong’o elaborated more about why she still wanted to see the Chadwick Boseman clip despite her pain, and her reasoning is enough to make any fan cry. “I watch this clip and I’m filled with grief and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be done shedding my tears from losing my friend,” she said. “But I’m like, we get to see him alive…that’s so wonderful.”

Honestly, that’s the same angle most fans have taken to the hit film since Boseman passed away. It is painful to see the actor so vibrant in this film when you know that his death will come so soon afterward. Still, though, there’s ultimately no better way to honor the actor than by watching his most influential performance.

Suddenly seeing the deceased actor was clearly a shock to Lupita Nyong’o, and she experienced a rollercoaster of warring emotions as a result of suddenly seeing Chadwick Boseman onscreen. Left to her own devices, she has been unable to re-watch Black Panther because it serves as a bittersweet reminder of Boseman dying from colon cancer in 2020. However, after having the clip suddenly thrust upon her, she chose to optimistically look at it as a celebration of her costar’s life rather than another opportunity to mourn his death.

One reason Lupita Nyong’o can easily celebrate Black Panther is that this was the insanely successful movie that she and Chadwick Boseman used to teach Marvel a very important lesson. As she recalls, the studio executives were “shaking a little bit in their boots” about whether or not this prominent Black superhero movie would be a major success. It went on to earn over a billion dollars at the box office, and as Nyong’o notes, “totally shattered the myth that Black doesn’t sell.”

Still, we can understand Lupita Nyong’o’s initial emotional reaction to seeing Chadwick Boseman onscreen again after he died at the age of 43. It often feels like a major era of Marvel died with him, and fans and executives alike have been trying to figure out the best way forward for this cinematic universe. Thanks to Boseman, though, we will always have an unforgettable character and truly killer performance as an inspiration for the coming generations of superhero cinema.