CHADWICK BOSEMAN ON BECOMING BLACK PANTHER AND WORKING WITH “REALLY SMART” MARVEL, The soon-to-be Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, has been friendly with the press since the big announcement was made a few weeks back that he had been cast as the Marvel character. And now in a new interview, the actor has revealed some details on where he stands as a comic-book fan, whether or not he’s tried on the Black Panther suit yet (he hasn’t), and more.
Talking to EW, Boseman says that he doesn’t think there’s a screenplay for his standalone film at the moment. “All of that is being come up with right now,” he says. “How do they say that: My pay grade doesn’t reach that high.” The actor also says that prior to the big reveal that he would be debuting as the character in Captain America: Civil War, he had only been talking to Marvel about the role for less than a month (though he acknowledges that there had been “rumors” out there prior to that).
“It wasn’t really an audition process,” Boseman says of how he and Marvel aligned. “It was more of a discussion about what they wanted to do and how I saw it and what I wanted to do. It was more of a feeling out process and they’re really smart. I can’t talk too much about it -- the only thing I can say is that they are smarter than you think they are.”
Of that fateful day at the El Capitan Theatre, the actor of course took the stage with his Marvel co-stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Chris Evans. And it sounds like there was all kinds of superhero good karma going around.
“But that was not the first time I had met Robert Downey,” he says. “I met him before we were about to do Jay Leno [in April 2013]. And he’s so cool because he actually came to my dressing room to talk with me. I didn’t even know how to take it; it was so not what you would think he would do. He came and sat down, and we talked for a good 15, 20 minutes, just chatting it up. So when we got to the day with he and Chris Evans -- Chris is also like that -- it was just sort of a family atmosphere. They just invited me in and both walked me through that process. They seemed like they were reliving their own versions of that [introduction] through me.”
And as for his fanboy street cred, he says that while he read comics growing up, Black Panther wasn’t a favorite until more recently.
“I wasn’t, like, a fanatic,” he says. “I definitely read comic books, but this particular character was not someone that I knew very well until the last 10 years or so. I’d heard of him, but I hadn’t really been like I’m a huge Black Panther fan. I think once you get into the film business, though, you start thinking about things that would be really cool to do, and then I fell in love with [the character]. For me, that’s going to be the case for most people who watch it, for most people who see this character emerge inside the Marvel world. And it’s the right time for it, at the end of the day. It’s the right time for the character to emerge and to have his own life, so I’m really, really excited for it. And I just feel it can be done the right way right now.”
Captain America: Civil War is scheduled for release on May 6, 2016, while Black Panther’s solo film will hit on November 3, 2017. Read the full chat with Chadwick Boseman at EW here.
