While promoting the release of Sinners, writer/director Ryan Coogler opens up about the late Chadwick Boseman, who played Marvel’s Black Panther.
Boseman passed away due to cancer back in 2020. Coogler appeared on the Breakfast Club and recalled how Coogler’s death impacted both him and Michael B. Jordan:
“Out of all of my actors, Chad’s death actually hit [Michael B. Jordan] the hardest. Chad was older than us, he was quite a bit older than us, even though he looked like he was the same age. He was a fully baked man from the South. He was an old school man’s man and compared to that dude when we worked together bro, me and Mike was kids.”
Coogler continued and said they thought about the actor while filming Sinners:
Chad changed my life. He was the kind of teacher who you never knew you was getting a lesson when he taught,” Coogler added of the late actor. “It was all by example and what he gave me and Michael was patience. He moved at an old-school pace and he took his time. He was always early. He was that type of dude. And Mike will tell you this, I told him man, I said, ‘Hey bro, what would Chad do in this [‘Sinners’] role? If he had this role what would he do?’ Because Chad never broke action.”
Coogler even said that Chadwick Boseman never broke character while filming, known as method acting, which got the Disney execs all nervous:
“He was talking in an African accent. Disney execs came to see us on ‘Panther.’ It was week two and they pulled up and it was the T’Challa accent and they were freaked out. I was like, ‘Don’t be freaked out. He’s working, man. He don’t turn it off until we wrap.’”
