Chadwick Aaron Boseman (1976-2020)
November 29, 1976
Chadwick Aaron Boseman (/ˈboʊzmən/; November 29, 1976 – August 28, 2020) was an American actor and playwright. After studying directing at Howard University, he began working consistently as a writer, director, and actor for the stage, winning a Drama League Directing Fellowship and an acting AUDELCO, and being nominated for a Jeff Award as a playwright for Deep Azure. Transitioning to the screen, he landed his first major role as a series regular on Persons Unknown in 2010, and his breakthrough performance came in 2013 as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the biographical film 42. He continued to portray historical figures, starring as singer James Brown in Get on Up (2014), and as lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017).
1995
Boseman graduated from T. L. Hanna High School in 1995 where he played on the basketball team. In his junior year, he wrote his first play, Crossroads, and staged it at the school after a classmate was shot and killed. He competed in Speech and Debate in the National Speech and Debate Association at T. L. Hanna. He placed eighth in Original Oratory at the 1995 National Tournament. He was recruited to play basketball at college but chose the arts instead, attending college at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and graduating in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing. While at college he worked in a black bookstore near the university, which friend Vanessa German said was important and inspirational to him; he drew on his experience there for his play Hieroglyphic Graffiti.
1998
His teachers at Howard included Al Freeman Jr. and Phylicia Rashad, who became a mentor. Rashad helped raise funds, notably from her friend and prominent actor Denzel Washington, so that Boseman and other classmates could attend the Oxford Summer Program of the British American Drama Academy at Balliol College, Oxford, in England to which they had been accepted. Boseman wanted to write and direct, and initially began studying acting to learn how to relate to actors. He attended the program in 1998, and developed an appreciation for the playwriting of William Shakespeare, studying the works of various dramatists including Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. He also traveled to Africa for the first time while at college, working in Ghana with his professor Mike Malone "to preserve and celebrate rituals with performances on a proscenium stage"; he said it was "one of the most significant learning experiences of [his] life". After he returned to the U.S., he graduated from New York City's Digital Film Academy.
2004
His best-known play, Deep Azure, was commissioned in 2004 by the Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago. It was nominated for a 2006 Jeff Award for Best New Work. Boseman said at the time that Deep Azure was "a fusion and progression of [his] previous plays", which he did not feel fit wholly in the Hip Hop theater genre. The play – about police brutality, a daring subject in 2004, and largely delivered in rhyme – was workshopped at the Apollo Theater in New York. Critic Chris Jones highly praised the work. In 2008, Boseman turned Deep Azure into a screenplay. Michael Greene, who would become his agent, picked it up and contacted Boseman when Tessa Thompson and Omari Hardwick expressed an interest in playing the lead roles, prompting Boseman's move to Los Angeles. He also directed, wrote, and produced the short film Blood Over a Broken Pawn in 2007, which was honored at the 2008 Hollywood Black Film Festival.
2016
In 2016, Boseman began portraying the Marvel Comics character T'Challa / Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America: Civil War was his first film in a five-picture deal with Marvel Entertainment. He did not audition for the role, instead having a "discussion about what [Marvel] wanted to do and how [he] saw it and what [he] wanted to do." While working on Civil War Boseman learned some Xhosa from John Kani, who played his father, and insisted on using the language for the character. Boseman also developed a Wakandan accent himself, and used it during the entire production "whether he was on camera or not". When asked by journalist Ryan Gilbey if he felt pressure not to "screw up" the beloved comics character, Boseman responded by saying: "It's more positive than that. It's more like: 'Seize it. Enjoy it.'" He told the Associated Press, though, that he more identified with the Black Panther's nemesis, Killmonger, knowing that his roots to his African past had been severed. Producer Kevin Feige explained that the Black Panther was included in Civil War "because [they] needed a third party. [It] needed fresh eyes [of a character] who wasn't embedded with the Avengers and who has a very different point of view than either Tony or Steve." Boseman's performance in Civil War was highly praised, though critics acknowledged the character's inclusion was largely to set up his upcoming headlining movie.
2017
Boseman portrayed Thurgood Marshall in the biographical film Marshall in 2017. Set years before he became the first African American Supreme Court Justice, the movie focuses on one of Marshall's early cases, the trial of Joseph Spell. It was premiered at Howard University, which both Boseman and Marshall had attended. Boseman was still worried about being put into a "biopic box", and felt that he didn't look enough like the real Marshall, but took the role because he enjoyed the script "separate from the historical relevance"; he had expected big courtroom speeches but found that in the case Marshall was silenced by the judge and had to mentor white co-counsel Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) to take on his first criminal case. He told The New York Times that he liked this element of the story because "it doesn't allow you as an audience member, no matter what color you are, to hide from the issues". Boseman researched Marshall extensively before portraying him, as well as studying videos of him speaking and losing muscle to reflect the younger Marshall's wiry frame. The film opened to an average critical reception, though Boseman's performance was praised. However, Vulture criticized his casting, noting that, unlike Boseman, "the real-life Marshall was a light-skinned man, and his place on the color spectrum undoubtedly influenced how he became such a legend." Boseman had been concerned about their differences before taking the role, but was convinced by the director and producer that as the film was telling an insular story it did not matter as much.
2018
He reprised the role in both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which were released in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Both films were the highest grossing of the year they were released, with Endgame going on to become the highest-grossing film of all time. Infinity War was filmed at the same time as Black Panther, and Boseman and other actors playing Wakandan characters improvised chanting scenes in the former that originated in the latter. Boseman's last physical appearance as Black Panther was in Endgame, at Tony Stark's funeral, but he will appear voicing an animated Black Panther in multiple episodes of the Disney+ series
2019
Boseman accepting the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture in 2019.
2020
On August 29, 2020, the day after Boseman died, the tweet in which his family announced his death on his Twitter account became the most-liked tweet in history, with over six million likes in under 24 hours, and accumulating over seven million by August 31, far displacing the previous record holder. His death was likened to other unexpected deaths of young black celebrities in 2020, particularly Kobe Bryant and Naya Rivera. The Associated Press and Clarín noted Rivera and Boseman as Hollywood's most impactful 2020 deaths.
May 26, 2021
His alma mater, Howard University, renamed its College of Fine Arts in honor of Boseman on May 26, 2021.