Chadwick Boseman was honored with a heart-wrenching statement from his Black Panther costar, Lupita Nyong’o, roughly ten days after his tragic passing on August 28 at the age of 43, following a four-year battle with colon cancer. In the statement, shared to Instagram on September 8, the Oscar winner, 37, wrote her words “from a place of hopelessness,” but nevertheless wanted to “honor a man who had great hope.” Like so many of the people Chadwick touched in his time on Earth, Lupita shared that she is “struggling to think and speak about my friend, Chadwick Boseman, in the past tense. It doesn’t make sense.”
The actress continued, “the news of his passing is a punch to my gut every morning. I am aware that we are all mortal, but you come across some people in life that possess an immortal energy, that seem like they have existed before, that are exactly where they are supposed to always be — here,” she wrote, adding, “Chadwick was one of those people.”
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Lupita described the actor, with whom she starred alongside as his love interest and fellow Wakanda warrior in the Oscar-winning 2018 film, as “a man who made the most of his time, and somehow also managed to take his time. I didn’t know him for long, but he had a profound effect on me in the time that I did,” she said. The actress then reflected on their time filming Marvel’s epic, saying, “I remember being struck by his quiet, powerful presence. He had no airs about him, but there was a higher frequency that he seemed to operate from. You got the sense that he was fully present and also somehow fully aware of things in the distant future,” she continued.
As a tribute to his lasting impact on her life, Luptia illustrated to readers that when she was “around Chadwick, I wanted to be better, less petty, more purposeful…He was fueled by love, not fear,” she added. “He moved quietly, deliberately and without imposing himself or his ideals on others. And yet he also made damn sure that his life meant something.” During his career, Chadwick played iconic Black figures including Jackie Robinson in 42, Thurgood Marshall in Marshall, and James Brown in the biopic Get On Up.
