Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2016 and fought hard for four years before sadly succumbing to the disease in 2020.
His widow, Simone Ledward Boseman, is raising awareness about her husband's journey—as well as the disadvantages faced by Black communities when it comes to resources meant to combat the disease—and has detailed his heartbreaking final few years in an interview with The Guardian.
Boseman never went public with his diagnosis and filmed seven movies, including Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, while in the midst of battling cancer.
"He never wanted to be treated differently," Simone explained. "A lot of the roles he did were so physical, and he still wanted to do them. He did not want to be judged by what he was experiencing. He didn’t want his diagnosis to interfere with the work."
No one in the industry knew of Boseman's illness, and the actor decided early on that he wanted to keep it private. "There's that danger in any sharing, because one person says something else, then another person says something else, and then it's on the wind. And the wind is going to carry it wherever it does."
"When you’re in a position like Chad's, everything you’re doing has to be protected. You just have to be careful who you tell your plans to," Simone continued. "And if you are someone who only wants to have deep, meaningful relationships and conversations, you very quickly come to find that your circle is going to be small because you can’t have those conversations with very many people."
Asked who knew about Boseman's health, she confirmed that "it was a couple of family members and a couple of friends. I had my therapist and my mom, and that was basically it. The circle became a dot."
There were signs that the Black Panther star might be going through something. His dramatic weight loss was headline news, but nothing was ever confirmed (social media users, however, came up with insulting nicknames for Boseman).
Asked if there was any anger in Hollywood over the decision to keep her husband's cancer under wraps, Simon acknowledged, "I'm sure there was. But I didn’t bear any of that. It’s normal to have questions, but I just said, 'If Chad didn’t talk to you about it, I’m not going to talk to you about it.'"
When it comes to Boseman's legacy, she said, "I never want his life story to be distilled down to the way that he died. I want his life to be about the way that he lived. I don't have to create his legacy, I just have to protect it. I just have to make sure that it doesn't get flattened."
"That's why I love talking about him – I think it's important that people understand him as a full human being, that they get the full picture of who he was."
The interviewer brought up Nakia's emotional speech about T'Challa (who died of an unspecified illness in the MCU) at the end of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. "He was King and Black Panther to everyone. But to me, he was everything. My T’Challa," Simone shared. "Ryan did specifically ask me about that scene. The only thing I added to it was that she said his name."
Black Panther 3 is in the works and will likely recast the role of T'Challa for the post-Avengers: Secret Wars MCU. There's even some chatter online about that character debuting in this December's Avengers: Doomsday, with Toussaint likely aged up to follow in his father's footsteps.