It's been almost a year since the
Coventry Telegraph reported that
Raw Leiba had met with Marvel about possibly playing Erik Killmonger. Now the relatively unknown actor/stuntman has decided to make a more dramatic pitch for the part by donning the full costume.
Image Courtesy of CoventryTelegraph.net
Last August he explained to
worldofblackheroes.com why he wanted the role.
Easy one, because he’s an expert fighter and can match Black Panther both Mentally and Physically and hopefully if I’m officially offered the role of Erik Killmonger my performance will make him very well known. Actors will tell you its allot more fun to be the bad guy, you can go outside the script a little bit and add your own personal touch to the character and it doesn’t hurt I look EXACTLY like the guy.
A native of Wakanda, he was born under the name N'Jadaka. When Ulysses Klaw and his mercenaries attacked Wakanda, they press-ganged N'Jadaka's father into helping them; when Klaw was defeated, the father died and his family was exiled. N'Jadaka ended up in Harlem, New York, nursing a hatred against the supervillain and T'Challa, the king who'd exiled him. He changed his name to Erik Killmonger and studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, desperate to avenge his father's death.
He eventually contacted King T'Challa and was repatriated back to Wakanda, settling in a village that would later change its name to N'Jadaka Village in his honour. He became a subversive, with dreams of ridding Wakanda of what he termed "white colonialist" cultural influences and return it entirely to its ancient ways. He then took advantage of the Black Panther's frequent absences in America with the Avengers to stage a coup d'état, along with Baron Macabre. He was defeated and killed, until the Mandarin claimed his body.
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Plus, for the past several years
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (
HBO's Oz) has expressed an interest in the role of
Black Panther, and he once again declares it his dream job.
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