After the sad news that Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman had died after battling cancer for many years in secret, one question in everyone’s minds after the mourning process was: “Now what?” The screenplay for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was already finished, as director Ryan Coogler revealed earlier this month. But after it became clear the story would have to be rewritten, who was going to take on the Black Panther mantle? Coogler reveals that Boseman himself inadvertently gave him the answer.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker said that part of his grieving process was watching tons of videos of Boseman including past interviews. Initially, this helped Coogler understand that the late actor would have wanted the Black Panther team to move on. But he also realized later on that Boseman had a lot to say about how he liked his costar and onscreen sister Letitia Wright. In a Korean talk show, Boseman revealed she was his favorite character:
“I was looking at that and I remembered the conversations Chadwick and I would have about Letitia all the way back when we were doing chemistry reads with actresses. He really responded to her. And I realized that maybe we could build a film around her character since that was his favorite character. […] You can make the argument that either Ramonda or Shuri is the protagonist, but I knew early on that Shuri would have the biggest arc in the film. […] The challenge for the script I had written before T’Challa passed away was finding a meaty arc for him. With this pivot, with Shuri in there, I saw that we could do a coming-of-age story. It could be a Trojan horse in this action adventure that people won’t see coming, but it could happen before their eyes.”
Shuri's Path to the Black Panther Suit Was Natural
Back when Black Panther first premiered in 2018, and when Wakanda became a major part of the Avengers’ last two movies, tech-genius Shuri quickly became a fan-favorite due to her efforts to protect Wakanda from an alien invasion, all the while trying to remove an Infinity Stone from Vision’s (Paul Bettany) forehead. In the new movie, Shuri slowly starts to come to terms with the fact that, even though she doesn’t want to, she is the natural heir of the superhero suit.
Aside from Wright, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also features Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Winston Duke as M’Baku, Martin Freeman as Everett Ross, Tenoch Huerta as super-villain Namor, Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams/Ironheart, Florence Kasumba as Ayo, and Michaela Coel as Aneka.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is in theaters now. Check out our interview with Coogler down below: