Netflix has released our first look at Chadwick Boseman’s final film role.
The upcoming Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will star the late Boseman as a trumpeter, Levee, navigating the music industry in 1920s’ Chicago.
The film is also set to star Oscar winner Viola Davis, and was produced by fellow actor Denzel Washington.
Adapted from August Wilson’s 1982 stage play, the film is set to centre around a recording session that leads to wider discussions on society and race.
Speaking to the New York Times, Washington said he “still can’t believe” that Boseman has passed.
“He did a brilliant job, and he’s gone… I still can’t believe it,” he said.
In the same interview, Davis described Boseman as the “ultimate collaborator” due to his ability to “discard” his ego.
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“A lot of actors mistake their presence for the event… an actor of Chadwick’s status usually comes on and it’s their ego who comes on before them: This is what they want, this is what they’re not going to do,” she said.
“That was absolutely, 150 per cent off the table with Chadwick… He could completely discard whatever ego he had, whatever vanity he had, and welcome Levee in.”
Davis also spoke of Boseman’s decision to keep his colon cancer diagnosis private, saying that she now realises “how tired he always seemed.”
“I look at his beautiful, unbelievable team that was meditating over him and massaging him, and I now realise everything they were trying to infuse in him to keep him going and working at his optimal level… And he received it,” she said.
She began: “I think a lot of times, people look at someone’s life backwards. Now we have the unfortunate knowledge that Chadwick succumbed to cancer at 43, but really, Levee represents so many Black men living in America.
“What we’re constantly navigating on a day-to-day basis is the trauma of our past — we’re trying to heal from it, we’re even trying to understand that it’s there, and we’re negotiating that with our dreams and who we want to become,” she continued.
“Now we know that the role mirrors Chadwick’s life, but if that were omitted, it still mirrors his life in a way… Because it mirrors the life of every Black person grieving, and especially the life of a Black man,” she concluded.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will premiere on Friday, December 18th.
Check out images from Chadwick Boseman’s final film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom:
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