Ryan Coogler recently spoke on The Official Black Panther Podcast where he shared emotional details of his last conversation with Chadwick Boseman. “I just finished [the script], man. My last conversation was calling him, asking him if he wanted to read it before I got notes from the studio,” Coogler recalls. “That was the last time we spoke. And yeah, so I, you know, he passed maybe a couple weeks after I finished.”
He went on to confirm that he and Denzel Washington were both having trouble contacting Boseman. “He was tired, bro. I could tell he was tired,” Coogler said. “I’d been trying to get a hold of him for a few days and Denzel had been trying to get a hold of him too. So I texted him and told him, ‘Hey man, Denzel said he’s been looking for you too.’ Because he just did Ma Rainey for Denzel. So he called me. And I could tell he was laying down.” “He talked about how they were planning their wedding in South Carolina. And how many people he was going to invite. And he asked about my kid, ’cause he had missed our baby shower,” he continued continues. “And then he was like, yeah, he said he didn’t wanna read it ’cause he didn’t wanna get in the way of whatever notes the studio might have.” “So he was like, ‘It’s better if I can read it later.’ But I found later that he was too tired to read anything,” Coogler concluded.
It’s a heartbreaking story considering that Chadwick Boseman kept his illness a secret until the end. It is also possible that the actor decided not to read the script since he was aware that he wouldn’t be able to play T’Challa again due to his condition. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will hit theaters on November 11, 2022.
