It’s been nearly five years since Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman passed away from colon cancer, and since he decided to battle the disease privately, those who worked alongside him are still processing the final moments they spent with him.
His last film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, documented a fiery recording session by the iconic 1920s blues pioneer, as seen in August Wilson’s book of the same name. It co-starred Viola Davis, and while on the promo trail for her action thriller film G20, she opened up to The Times about what it was like being around Boseman, including her own misjudgments.
While playing the titular Ma Rainey, David remembers that no one knew he was sick, so she found it odd that his wife and makeup artist were constantly in orbit playing meditative music and massaging his back.
“There was a part of me that was a little judgmental — why do you need all that? Little did I know that they were doing it because he was dying,” she remembers.
Filming for the movie took place in the summer of 2019, and Boseman would pass the following summer. The film came out on Netflix just four months after his death and later received nominations at the Academy Awards, and he posthumously won a Screen Actors Guild award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.
After the news of his death, his family revealed a timeline of his battle, which began after he was diagnosed in 2016 with colon cancer. It eventually progressed to stage IV in 2020, but he still kept the illness to himself and continued to work on films like Marshall and Da 5 Bloods before passing away in his Los Angeles home surrounded by family and friends at 43 years old.
Months later, Davis spoke about his untimely passing in an interview with The Guardian, promising to memorialize him as more than his profession and rather a reflection of the man she was lucky enough to work with.
“I think he is going to be remembered as a hero,” says Davis. “There’s a part of the public that’s gonna associate that with Black Panther; I do not. I associate that with his authenticity, especially in the midst of a profession that sometimes can suck that out of you.”