When Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 at the age of 43, four years into a cancer diagnosis that he kept private, he was mourned by many as Black Panther, the noble king of Wakanda: the first Black superhero in a major movie and an icon to millions the world over.
That role cast a long shadow over Boseman’s career, which also spanned directing and playwriting. His CV was full of heroes of the real kind too: he memorably played James Brown in Get On Up, Jackie Robinson in 42, and Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice, in Marshall. He bore the weight of those characters, and their responsibilities, with the utmost grace. “I think he was built for it,” says his brother Derrick, who, along with their brother Kevin, has been entrusted with managing Boseman’s estate. “In a way Chad trained and prepared his entire life to step into being ‘Chadwick Boseman’ in the way the world knew him. Those characters he played, he’d read about them and wrote book reports about them at school. He was fulfilling his dream – Blackness was really close to his heart.”
