Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives in theaters on November 11. The Ryan Coogler-directed sequel stars Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Dominique Thorne, and Angela Bassett.
The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be the first Black Panther movie without the actor who played the titular character in the original. Chadwick Boseman passed away in 2020 from complications related to colon cancer.
The November 8th edition of the Tamron Hall talk show featured Oscar-nominated actress Angela Bassett discussing Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Bassett shared her reaction to learning about Boseman’s shocking passing.
“I couldn’t believe it. No one knew anything. And then you start thinking about [how] they were telling you it was four years [of battling cancer],” Angela Bassett told Tamron Hall. “And we had just done [Black Panther] two years previous.”
Bassett continued, “So then you think you sit there and you think of all the effort and the commitment that he exhibited with this going on, with this private struggle going on. And you just respected him, adored him, and appreciated him all the more.”
Chadwick Boseman was just 48 years old at the time of his death. In addition, Angela Bassett detailed how the cast and crew continued on with creating Black Panther: Wakanda Forever following the tragic loss of the South Carolina-raised actor.
“Of course, we were extremely saddened. But yet the impact that this film had on the world and moving things forward and the imagery of it. Here we had an opportunity to do it again and hopefully bigger and better. But of course, now we were going forward without our leader,” stated Bassett.