THE MAKING OF AN ICON
IN ONLY A DECADE, CHADWICK BOSEMAN DELIVERED FIVE INDELIBLE PERFORMANCES. EMPIRE WRITERS LOOK BACK AT HIS ROLES AND HOW THEY ESTABLISHED HIS LEGACY
JACKIE ROBINSON , 42 (2013)
IT’S PERHAPS NO surprise that 42 was the movie that brought Chadwick Boseman to Marvel’s attention, and ultimately set him on the path to Wakanda. Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in baseball’s Major League, was a reserved man who, for the most part, kept his inner feelings buried. Those are qualities that can be found in T’challa. And they’re qualities that, according to 42’s writer-director Brian Helgeland, resonated deeply within Boseman as well.
Boseman had just two movies — Express: The Ernie Davis Story and The Kill Hole — under his belt when he got the role. He was already in his mid-thirties (but looked younger), allowing him to bring experience and accrued wisdom to the role of Robinson as he navigates his way through a world full of racist scumbags trying to take him down a peg or two at every turn. There’s the flight attendant who bumps Jackie and his wife Rachel from a flight because Rachel used a whites-only restroom. There’s the opposition team manager (Alan Tudyk) who fires a fusillade of racist epithets, including the N-word, when Robinson is at bat; and who, later, poses for a publicity shot with a clearly reluctant Robinson. And there are his own teammates, so threatened by Robinson’s very presence on their side that they draw up a petition to have him kicked out.
Throughout the movie, Boseman reacts to these abuses by showing Robinson’s remarkable self-control; only a flick of the eyes, a flare of the nostrils or a tilt of the head betrays the anger he is feeling. Yet eventually, Robinson caves under the pressure of constantly turning the other cheek. After his ordeal at the hands (or mouth) of Tudyk’s Ben Chapman, Jackie heads down the players’ tunnel, smashes his bat against the wall, and, in a flood of tears and a series of primal screams, unleashes all his rage and pent-up frustration. Boseman is incredible in this moment, full of passion and raw pain. It’s in Robinson’s quieter, stiller scenes that we see the grace under pressure that would characterise his Black Panther. But it’s here — showcased by Helgeland in an unbroken master shot — we see that Boseman was an actor of rare versatility and power, able to take big swings and knock the ball out of sight. And in 42, he was just warming up. CHRIS HEWITT
JAMES BROWN, GET ON UP (2014)
THEY CALLED HIM Mr Brown. Boseman was known for playing paragons of moral sincerity and dignity under pressure, but James Brown was his shot at an anti-hero. The same hands that taught Brown’s band members the funk also pummelled his wife. The same feet that tore up the stage slammed down the pedals of his pick-up truck during a Pcp-fuelled flight from the police. The same voice that commanded attention from the Harlem Apollo to the White House bullied musicians for flubbing a note or asking for a decent salary. Once Boseman had got into Brown’s stormy headspace each day, not to mention his low, grainy slur of a voice, it was easier to stay in character between takes: not Chad, but Mr Brown.
Fresh from his breakthrough role in 42, Boseman told Get On Up director Tate Taylor that this was his chance to prove he wasn’t a one-hit wonder: a character with whom he had nothing in common bar South Carolina roots and a determination to get things right. On one level
it was an immense physical challenge. Boseman didn’t just need to learn how to sing and dance, but how to do it like James Brown, a human metronome who communicated in rhythm, pulling off signature moves — the shuffles, the slides, the splits — conceived by a man six inches shorter. What’s more, the time-hopping narrative demanded that the 36-year-old actor inhabit this body from its teens to its sixties. Whereas 42 documented a single year, Boseman told Empire on set, this was “an entire career… on PCP!” Every scene was a set-piece.
Boseman’s most transformative performance deserved an Oscar nomination. He brought the Godfather Of Soul to life, from brash young hustler to chunky, mushmouthed addict, but it’s when he’s radiating the unstoppable self-confidence of Brown’s imperial phase that he really shines. You can feel Brown’s power to sweet-talk Presidents, calm a fractious crowd after the murder of Martin Luther King, and turn the toxic legacy of a loveless childhood into rocket fuel: powerful but volatile. Even within a single scene, he’s mercurial, snapping from toothy charm to surly menace. It’s this unpredictability that makes Boseman’s Brown both dangerous and fun to watch, the sly asides to camera giving him a rare opportunity to be playful.
Boseman channelled some of Brown’s legendary perfectionism on set: the star, not the director, was most likely to demand another take. He told Taylor that he wanted the camera to capture his whole body during the performance sequences, so that his total commitment to the role was beyond doubt. Don’t worry, Taylor assured him, “Nobody’s gonna think this is fake.”
THURGOOD MARSHALL, MARSHALL (2017)
THURGOOD MARSHALL WAS a giant of the American legal profession. As a trial lawyer, he fought a remarkable 32 civil-rights cases in the Supreme Court, winning 29; he later became the first Black member of the Court. But when director Reginald Hudlin set out to dramatise his story with Chadwick Boseman, he avoided all those landmark cases. Instead he chose a relatively early incident, a 1940 rape trial where Marshall was not even permitted to speak. And in doing so, he set Boseman a huge challenge: how do you portray one of history’s great advocates without opening your mouth?
“I thought I was going to have all these great speeches and closing statements and [now] I’m going to be gagged? Wait a minute!” Boseman recounted his thinking in a Rogerebert.com interview. “So it became a thing of, ‘You’re the catcher who is giving the signals to the pitcher.’”
That’s why Boseman’s Marshall cajoles, coaches and occasionally bullies Josh Gad’s inexperienced insurance lawyer Sam Friedman through his examination of a white woman (Kate Hudson) accusing a Black defendant (Sterling K. Brown). Marshall sometimes plays bulldozer, pushing aside all resistance — even from his allies — but what initially seems like borderline rudeness is revealed as the secret to his effectiveness. Marshall is the NAACP’S entire legal department; he’s a man on a mission. While he picks his battles judiciously, he has no time to waste. And Boseman layers in endless contradictions that make Marshall come alive. He has a cool, analytical lawyer’s mind, but
a knack for emotional appeals. The racism he encounters sometimes seems to amuse him (go ahead and underestimate me, he seems to dare the world) and sometimes makes him furious, but he rarely lets it override his control.
Boseman doesn’t quite have Marshall’s gangly physicality — he’s more elegant — but you sense the same vast intelligence underpinning his work. And, as he recounted at the time, he tried to find the same “swagger or rhythm” that a younger Marshall would have had.
This is a portrait, like Boseman’s Jackie Robinson, of Black excellence, and of a man who makes sacrifices to change the world. A member of the Harlem Renaissance, Marshall could be at home yucking it up with intelligentsia buddy Langston Hughes (Jussie Smollett) or caring for his gorgeous wife Buster (Keesha Sharp). Instead he travels from one hostile town to another, trying to remove the white hand from the scales of justice. Boseman bears the weight of that sacrifice lightly, finding the joy in Marshall’s unfailing sense of purpose, in his dedication to the work. As we now know, it was something that he could understand better than most.
T’CHALLA, BLACK PANTHER (2018)
“IT’S HARD FOR a good man to be king.”
That refrain was at the heart of the marketing for Black Panther, and it’s one of the biggest reasons why T’challa is such a compelling character. As the ruling monarch of Wakanda he’s faced with countless difficult dilemmas, but he always strives to overcome them without betraying his ideals in the process. Key to his decision-making is the bevy of smart, capable women he surrounds himself with and frequently seeks counsel from, whether it be his whip-smart sister Shuri or the formidable General Okoye.
Even before you factor in all the cool, vibranium-powered tech that helps make Black Panther one of the most fearsome warriors in the Marvel universe, his are an uncommon set of traits for a hero, and it has led to some of the MCU’S best moments in recent years. Opting to spare Zemo (Daniel Brühl) instead of carrying out his revenge in Captain America: Civil War is one such scene that resonates, and choosing to defy centuries of his nation’s tradition and reveal Wakanda to the world at the end of Black Panther is another. Both instances show T’challa not doing what is easy but what is right, and the latter scene in particular is a powerful example of what wisdom and leadership on a global scale should look like.
While it’s clear that Marvel cast really well, some actors grow into their superhero roles. It took Chris Evans a film or two to really get comfortable with Steve Rogers. In time, Chris Hemsworth and Thor’s personalities would intertwine. But if T’challa were real he’d want Chadwick Boseman to play him. There’s a specific and rare set of qualities that the King of Wakanda needs to have — gravitas, dignity, and grace among them — and Boseman had spent his career exuding such virtues on screen. Much like T’challa himself, he had proven he could handle the burden of heavy responsibility in portraying and illuminating the humanity of so many Black icons on screen. It’s little wonder that he was the only choice for the role when the time came for Marvel’s top brass to figure out who could play an African king. The fact that Boseman fought to play T’challa with an
authentic African accent because Wakanda was untainted by colonisation was an early sign that they had chosen well.
The differences between Black Panther and other heroes in the MCU are striking. Flamboyance, bravado, and quips are often the default setting if you’re fighting the good fight, but T’challa is much more reserved and serious. That’s a hard thing to act, and an even harder thing to have audiences aspire to, but in Boseman’s hands, it’s both. The thunderous reaction that greeted his emergence from the portals in Avengers: Endgame was a testament to how cheerworthy T’challa had become in just three movies, in addition to being a tantalising glimpse into the MCU’S future.
There have been many interpretations of T’challa in his 54-year history, in comic books created by the likes of Reginald Hudlin, Don Mcgregor and Ta-nehisi Coates, and Boseman’s portrayal felt like it took a bit of inspiration from each one, from his deep thought to his mercy to his fierceness. Through it all, there’s an innate sense of pride he brings to T’challa that befits the king of an African nation.
STORMIN’ NORMAN DA 5 BLOODS (2020)
SPIKE LEE HIMSELF said it: Chadwick Boseman was a real-life superhero. Across his painfully brief but illustrious career he delivered a number of definitive cinematic portraits of Black American heroes, something Lee recognised when he cast Boseman in Da 5 Bloods.
Lee’s latest film is centred around Stormin’ Norman, a Black soldier and the wise squad leader of the Bloods, who died in the Vietnam War. As well as recovering their hidden gold, Norman’s former compatriots also try to recover his body after the many years that had since passed.
As Norman, Boseman feels both incredibly human but almost ethereal, something helped along by the fact that in the older Bloods’ flashbacks to the war, Norman is the only squad member depicted as a young man. Little did we all know that this particular element of the film would play not just as an elegy for brothers like Stormin’ Norman, but for Boseman himself, his formidable screen presence itself now frozen in time. But that’s not the only reason Boseman’s part in Da 5 Bloods will be remembered. He’s simply captivating to watch, holding his own even alongside cinema greats like Delroy Lindo, with whom he shares the film’s most powerful scene.
At his lowest moment, Lindo’s character Paul, lost in the jungle, begins to hallucinate his former leader Norman, after it has been revealed that Paul was responsible for Norman’s death by way of friendly fire. The burden of guilt drives him to the edge, and away from his friends and his son. It’s a deceptively simple scene, with only a handful of lines on Boseman’s part as this vision of his soldier confronts Paul about the truth of his death. But Norman appears to him not as a spectre of guilt or revenge, but one of absolution. Boseman plays this part passionately but gently, his concern visible but delicate, Norman’s smile never fading.
Boseman embodies grace in two ways – in the character’s capacity for forgiveness and empathy, and the effortlessness with which he carries himself. That such a clear and believable picture of who Norman was to these men is created in such little screentime is testament to the work Boseman put in. Here, and always, he made all of it look easy.