Chadwick Boseman wouldn’t break character on ‘Black Panther’ set

Ryan Coogler, the director who worked with the late Chadwick Boseman on the hit 2018 movie Black Panther, is looking back on how the star led by example.

Boseman, who died in 2020 at age 43, was completely committed to his main character of T’Challa in the Marvel movie about the advanced kingdom of Wakanda, Coogler recalled on a recent episode of Power 105.1 FM’s The Breakfast Club.

“Chad never broke accent. He was talking in an African accent, bro, meeting for dinner at 9 o’clock,” Coogler said. “I remember the Disney executives came to see us on Panther on, like, week 2, and he pulled up, and it was T’Challa’s accent. They were freaked out, and I was like, ‘Don’t be freaked out. He’s working, man. He don’t turn it off till we wrap.'”

The sequel to that film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, wasn’t released until 2022, after Boseman’s death from complications of colon cancer.

Coogler said that he’s asked Michael B. Jordan, the actor he’s worked with on movies including Black Panther and the Creed films, to consider, “What would Chad do? In this role? If he had this role, what would he do?”

The director has long acknowledged that Boseman’s death was a blow to him.

“What Chad taught me…he changed my life, bro. He was the kind of teacher who you never knew you was getting a lesson when he taught,” Coogler said in the new interview. “It was all by example. What he gave me and Michael was patience. He moved at an old-school pace, and he took his time. He was always early. He was that type of dude.”

He lamented that there would never be another Chadwick Boseman: “It’s like asking somebody, ‘What was it like to suit up across from Mike Jordan?’ It made you a better hooper, I bet.”

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In fact, Coogler told EW in October 2022 that he almost gave up making movies altogether after he lost his friend.

“I was at a point when I was like, ‘I’m walking away from this business,'” Coogler said. “I didn’t know if I could make another movie period, [let alone] another Black Panther movie, because it hurt a lot. I was like, ‘Man, how could I open myself up to feeling like this again?'”

Coogler eventually chose to move forward after considering talks he had with Boseman about how much the actor cared about T’Challa.

Listen to the full conversation above.