I first saw Chadwick Boseman in the movie Get on Up in 2015, a year after it was made and a year before he was diagnosed of cancer. I had just finished watching Tristan & Isolde and, in the absence of something better – or so I thought – I settled for Get on Up.
That was how I ‘met’ Boseman. I was intrigued by an actor telling me about the life of a singer I never knew: James Brown. I’d heard my father talk about James Brown and how he would lift the mic and prance around the stage with it, while he bellowed his high noted and strained his chords. Those were stories I saw laid before my eyes by Boseman in that role. It was electrifying.
Till this day, the only actor I have seen rival Boseman’s role as Brown is Jamie Fox (in Ray, the biopic about Ray Charles. To confirm my opinion, he did win an Oscar for this in 2005).
By the time I saw him again in Marshall (that movie about the first African-American Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall), I was sold. I had come to know him as one who saw out the roles he played to astounding conclusion.
And to think he was carrying a burden more than any the characters he portrayed ever carried almost redefines the word ‘fortitude’. While he kept his illness from his loving fans, he had countless surgeries and still went on set, grimacing and carrying on in obvious defiance.
His death is touchingly sorrowful and a lesson in itself. While you think your burdens could weigh you down and finally get you, someone somewhere has got bigger stuff to deal with.
He spread kindness (he visited many children suffering from cancer), love (married his partner almost a year before his demise), laughter (featured on some morning comedy shows), entertainment (you saw the movies, especially the ones from the Marvel stable) and gave his troubles the middle finger.
Although he was born to to Carolyn and Leroy Boseman in Anderson, South Carolina, where he spent his early years, Chadwick said in an interview that DNA testing indicated that he had ancestors from Krio and Limba in Sierra Leone, and Yoruba in Nigeria.
He attended T. L. Hanna High School and graduated in 1995, and proceeded to the Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he bagged a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing in 2000. He was admitted to the Oxford Mid-Summer Programme of the British American Drama Academy in London, and with the help of one of his teachers, Phylicia Rashad, raised the money to attend the programme.
He later returned to the United States, where he attended the New York City’s Digital Film Academy, learning how to write, direct and act.
Chadwick first showed talent in movies when he wrote his first play, Crossroads as a junior student, and staged it in the school shortly after a classmate was shot and killed.
Later on, he worked briefly as the drama instructor in the Schomburg Junior Scholars Programme, housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York, before moving down to Los Angeles to actively take on his acting career. His interest was to become a director, and acting was part of his strategy to become a good director.
Boseman first appeared on screen in 2003, taking up a role in an episode of Third Watch. He also featured in episodes of the series Law & Order, CSI: NY, ER, Lincoln Heights, Persons Unknown, among others. In 2003, he got a role in the daytime soap opera All My Children but lost the role after voicing concerns to producers about racist stereotypes in the script.
While seeking acting roles, he continued writing plays and in 2006, one of his scripts for Deep Azure, performed at the Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago, was nominated for a 2006 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work.
The movie 42 marked a turning point in Chadwick’s career. No less than 25 other actors were considered, but the director Brian Helgeland decided that Chadwick’s bravery made him right for the role.
“Because I said ‘no’ at certain times, it made me available for the things that got me to where I am,” he stated.
Also in 2013, Boseman landed a major role in the indie film The Kill Hole, while in 2014, he featured in Draft Day, playing the part of an NFL draft prospect. He also starred as James Brown in 2014 movie Get on Up.
He starred as Thoth, a deity from Egyptian mythology, in Gods of Egypt in 2016, as well as the Marvel Comics character T’Challa/Black Panther, with Captain America: Civil War being his first film in a five-picture deal with Marvel.
It was in the same year he was diagnosed with colon cancer. For some reason, Boseman chose to keep this information away from the public, keeping up with his acting career and filming various roles in-between surgeries and chemotherapies.
Some other movies which he acted in the last four years include Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, 21 Bridges, Marshall, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the Netflix war drama film Da 5 Bloods, directed by Spike Lee and released on June 12, 2020.
Due to Chadwick’s ongoing treatment, he lost weight and became emaciated in recent years, but did not slowdown in his career. As the disease progressed, the weight loss became more evident, until he gave in.
The statement from his family on his Instagram handle said: “Chadwick persevered through it all, and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much. From Marshall to Da 5 Bloods, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and several more, all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy.”
Boseman’s life is as enigmatic as it is exemplary.
The tributes pouring out from celebrities around the world underline the degree to which his struggles and the daily victories he etched made others strong. The cultural milestones he set about being young, black and gifted via his movies set him on a pedestal and, by God, he lived up to it.
“Chadwick came to the White House to work with kids when he was playing Jackie Robinson,” former American president Barack Obama tweeted, referring to the 2013 film 42.
“You could tell right away that he was blessed. To be young, gifted, and Black; to use that power to give them heroes to look up to; to do it all while in pain – what a use of his years.”
Racing driver Lewis Hamilton dedicated his pole position at the Belgian Grand Prix to the actor.
“He’s inspired a whole generation of young black men and women and provided them with a true superhero to look up to. Rest in power my friend,” he wrote on Twitter.
Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk, said the “tragedies amassing this year have only been made more profound” by his death.
Tom Holland, who is currently playing Spiderman, called Boseman a role model for millions around the world, while Captain America star Chris Evans and Thor actor Chris Hemsworth said they were heartbroken by his death.
The eldest son of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr praised Boseman for his range of roles, saying he “brought history to life” in his depictions of real black men and was “a superhero to many” as Black Panther.
Award-winning musician John Legend called Boseman “a bright light” who “always seemed to carry our ancestors with him”.
Ava DuVernay, who has directed a string of powerful films and documentaries including Selma, about the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, also paid tribute.
“Showing us all that greatness between surgeries and chemotherapy. This is what dignity looks like,” tweeted TV star and author Oprah Winfrey.
Actress Halle Berry described him as an “incredible man with immeasurable talent, who leaned into life regardless of his personal battles”.
Marvel Studios, which created Black Panther, said the actor’s legacy would “live on forever”.
The final tweet posted to Boseman’s Twitter account announcing that he had died is now the most ‘liked’ tweet of all time.
The sad truth is, Boseman is no more and our hearts go out to his family and the global creative community. More importantly, he touched lives while he was here, suffering through his pain. You are alive and the ball is in your court. You do not have to be an actor to touch lives. He embraced his pain and did not project it to have a mega pity-party. He was not just good at portraying great roles; he was a great man. The lesson for us is to explore our inner Boseman and do away with the pity mentality. Your strength is the strength of others who look up to you.
