"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" star Lupita Nyong'o says she supports Marvel's decision not to recast the titular superhero after star Chadwick Boseman died unexpectedly.
But she's not revealing if she's the new Black Panther.
The "12 Years a Slave" Oscar winner, who plays the Wakandan War Dog Nakia in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shared her take in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, lending her voice to a raging debate about the franchise.
"Losing your centerpiece, everything changed," Nyong'o said of Boseman, who died of colon cancer in 2020 when the sequel was still in its early stages. "When you say the world rotated around him, it revolved around him, it did."
At the time of Boseman's death, "Black Panther" writer and director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole had a script for the Oscar-nominated film's sequel that centered on Boseman's King T'Challa's evolution as a leader and that was rooted in his perspective. Coogler described it as "a character study that delved deeply into his psyche and situation."
So when Marvel decided against recasting T'Challa with another actor to "honor the legacy" that Boseman built, a debate began about losing the character who had become a significant pop culture symbol. #RecastTchalla and #SaveTchalla movements emerged — one such campaign even got a nod from Boseman's brother — arguing that losing the MCU's King of Wakanda would hurt audiences, including Black boys and men who saw themselves in the character.
But Nyong'o doesn't see it that way.
"That is not the death of the Black Panther, that's the whole point," Nyong'o said. "It's laying to rest [T'Challa] and allowing for real life to inform the story of the movies. I know that there are all sorts of reasons why people want him to be recast, but I don't have the patience. I don't have the presence of mind, or I don't have the objectivity to argue with that. I don't. I'm very biased."
Nyong'o said that Coogler "wrote something that so honored the truth" of what those who knew Boseman were feeling and "created something that could honor that and carry the story forward." It also made the "Us" star weep. Marvel boss Kevin Feige also doubled down on the studio's decision in September, telling Empire that "it just felt like it was much too soon to recast," adding that "the world is still processing the loss of Chad. And Ryan poured that into the story."
Speculation about who would succeed T'Challa as the hero who would take up the Black Panther's mantle in the films has run rampant since, with many assuming that it to be T'Challa's younger sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and aligning with a Marvel Comics storyline. But when the film's first trailer was released earlier this month (and showing a funeral procession and national mourning for the character), only one thing about T'Challa's successor was clear: She's a woman.
Many took that as confirmation that Shuri donned the mantle, but the teaser was intentionally vague. So it's anybody's guess if it's Nyong'o's Nakia or Danai Gurira's General Okoye under the panther's new tech suit. (Even franchise newcomer Michaela Coel has been suggested as a possibility.)
In line with Marvel's ironclad anti-spoiler policy, Nyong'o expertly rebuffed the notion that she's the new Black Panther: "If I told you that, I might as well just … swim into the ocean and never be seen again."
The 39-year-old, who is the daughter of a Kenyan politician, also had a diplomatic response about Marvel's hulking presence in the film industry, saying that the Marvel debate boils down to a philosophical question about art and its purpose.
"I believe that art plays a role in moving the people that experience it, and a lot of people are moved by Marvel. Is you being moved by this thing less important than me being moved by Picasso?" she said.
"I think to be culturally prosperous, to be artistically prosperous as a people, is to have options," she added. "In Kenya, sugar was sugar, it was brown or it was white. You come to the States, and a whole section in the supermarket is dedicated to sugars. So many different sugars. That is a symbol of prosperity, when you have options. So I personally love a good Marvel movie, but it doesn't take me away from really wanting the little character-driven film. I believe in the fight for those things to be kept alive because the one thing we always want, the ultimate privilege, is choice."
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