Lupita Nyong’o got choked up after seeing a clip of the late Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther on Monday, because she hadn’t watched the film since his death in 2020.
“I have to admit I haven’t seen the film since Chadwick died,” Nyong’o said at a BFI London Film Festival Screen Talk event for her new movie The Wild Robot. “So I’m having a moment.”
During the Q&A, she and the audience were shown a clip from 2018’s Black Panther featuring her and Boseman together, and she became emotional and silent while trying to compose herself, wiping away tears.
“It’s okay,” she continued as the audience applauded her. “The grief is just the love with no place to put it, right? I don’t want to run away from the tears or the grief. You just live with it. That experience will never be separate from the love that was formed… 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. But I’m like, we get to see him alive, and that’s so wonderful.”
Nyong’o went on to reflect on how the Marvel movie not only made history but also shattered expectations. “There was a lot of fear, definitely from the executives,” she said. “Marvel was shaking a little bit in their boots! We were too because we were like, we only get to do this once, and we’ve got to do it right. And it totally shattered the myth that Black doesn’t sell.”
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Boseman died from colon cancer at age 43 in August 2020, a diagnosis he’d kept private for four years. Nyong’o and other Black Panther costars Michael B. Jordan and Winston Duke were present during a private memorial service in Malibu a week later.
In both Black Panther films, Nyong’o portrayed Nakia, a War Dog for the nation of Wakanda and a former love of Boseman’s superhero and leader T’Challa. On the fourth anniversary of his death, Nyong’o marked the occasion with an emotional tribute on social media. “Grief never ends. But it changes,” she wrote at the time. “It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love… Remembering Chadwick Boseman. Forever.”
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly ahead of the release of the sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, two years after his death, Nyongo’ said she “dreaded” the start of the shoot. “Because I could not imagine how we would proceed without Chadwick,” she added. “It was unfathomable to me. But [director] Ryan [Coogler] managed to honor his life and his role in both the film and our lives with his moving, truthful, and clear vision.”
