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For Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, searching for what his “real culture” is was the toughest part of taking on the role in Ryan Coogler’s record-breaking film.
“To say that I know so much about my past, I know so much about my history, which as an African-American, I’ve searched for that my entire life — but to be a person that didn’t have to search for it, it was given to me,” he told the Actors Roundtable.
Continued Boseman: “There is a certain patriotism to something that has never been lost — it’s ancient. And being able to hold on to that, it was something that, throughout the movie, I was like, ‘Wow, the weight of that is something I have to convey to the world.’”
The actor went on to explain how he didn’t want Black Panther to be “parody” of African-American history and culture, saying he wanted to “convey that this is real, because it is.”
“We want to make a superhero movie, but that’s not the most important thing here. People will love the superhero movie if they get this other thing from it,” Boseman told the roundtable.
He added: “I never thought I would see a studio say, ‘Yeah, we are going to put the money behind this movie with a mostly black cast.’ Sometimes, as African-Americans, we have the ‘black version,’ and it’s never as good. They never put as much into it, and so it made me more idealistic, and I think that’s aspirational for not just myself, but for other people, and not just in film but in other arenas.”
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