Viola Davis is reflecting on her time working with Chadwick Boseman on the actor’s last film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
In an interview with The Times published on Saturday (March 29), the EGOT winner, 59, shared that no one on set knew Boseman, 43, was battling colon cancer when they filmed the 2020 movie.
Davis, who portrayed Ma Rainey in the film, recalled Boseman’s wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, and his makeup artist rubbing his back and playing meditative music.
“There was a part of me that was a little judgmental—why do you need all that,” Davis said. “Little did I know that they were doing it because he was dying.”
Boseman died in August 2020 after a four-year battle with colon cancer, which he had kept secret from the industry, including his colleagues at Marvel and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
The film, which dramatized one of blues singer Ma Rainey’s recording sessions in Chicago, premiered just four months after Boseman’s death.
For his performance as Levee Green, the late actor received a posthumous win for Best Male Actor in a Leading Role at the 2021 Screen Actors Guild Awards and his first Oscar nomination.
Just months after his passing, Davis shared with The Guardian that she believed Boseman “will be remembered as a hero.”
“There’s a part of the public that’s gonna associate that with Black Panther; I do not,” she said. “I associate that with his authenticity, especially in the midst of a profession that sometimes can suck that out of you.”
The Woman King star added that her costar “was a person who lived a life bigger than themselves.”
“I think that his legacy, his body of work, his integrity, is going to influence generations upon generations to come,” she said.
