Chadwick Boseman

Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born on November 29, 1976, in Anderson, South Carolina, and grew up in a working-class family. His mother, Carolyn, was a nurse, while his father, Leroy Boseman, worked in a textile factory and managed an upholstery business. Boseman attended T. L. Hanna High School, where he played basketball and wrote his first play, Crossroads, after a teammate was shot and killed. He staged the work at school and raised money to take it to New York. He studied directing at Howard University, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2000. There he met Phylicia Rashad. Rashad encouraged Boseman to attend the Oxford Mid-Summer Program of the British American Drama Academy, and she helped secure financial support for him and students. Boseman also trained at the Digital Film Academy in New York City. Before his screen breakthrough, he wrote plays including Deep Azure and Hieroglyphic Graffiti and worked in television, appearing in episodes of Third Watch, Law & Order, CSI: NY, and ER. His first regular television role came in 2010, when he played Sergeant Graham McNair in the NBC drama Persons Unknown. In 2013, he portrayed baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in 42. It was acclaimed. Boseman continued playing historical figures: singer James Brown in Get on Up (2014), Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017), and Vietnam War soldier Norman Earl Holloway, known as “Stormin’ Norm,” in Da 5 Bloods (2020). He joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as T’Challa in Captain America: Civil War (2016). Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler, made T’Challa the center of a film set in Wakanda, the fictional African nation concealed by advanced technology. The film received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won three: costume design, production design, and original score. Boseman appeared in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. During production of these later films, Boseman underwent treatment for colon cancer, diagnosed at stage III in 2016. The illness progressed to stage IV before his death on August 28, 2020, at his Los Angeles home, with his wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, and family. He was 43. Netflix released Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Boseman played trumpeter Levee Green opposite Viola Davis as Ma Rainey. His performance earned a posthumous Golden Globe for best actor in a drama and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In 2021, Marvel’s What If...? featured Boseman’s final performance as T’Challa, voiced for an alternate-universe storyline.