Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong'o broke down in tears after watching a clip from the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther in which she co-starred with actor Chadwick Boseman.
Boseman, who kept his colon cancer diagnosis secret, died from his condition at 43, two years after he became the first Black actor to headline a Marvel film as T'Challa—a.k.a. Black Panther.
Nyong'o played Nakia, an undercover spy for Wakanda and T'Challa's former lover.
On Monday, the Kenyan-Mexican actor participated in a BFI London Film Festival event where she was presented with a clip from Black Panther featuring a scene between her and the late actor.
She took a moment of silence to collect herself, overcome with grief.
“I have to admit, I haven’t seen the film since Chadwick died, so I’m having a moment," she said during the Screen Talk event, adding:
“The grief is just the love, with no place to put it, right?"
She politely refused to move on to the next clip, saying:
"I don’t run away from the tears or the grief, you know? You just live with it.”
You can view the clip, shared by The Hollywood Reporter, here.
She continued:
“That experience will never be separate from the love that was formed."
“I watch this clip and I’m filled with grief."
"I don’t know whether I’ll ever be done shedding my tears from losing my friend. But I’m like, ‘We get to see him alive.’ And that’s so wonderful.”
On the anniversary of his death on August 28, Nyong'o paid tribute to Boseman and discussed the nature of grieving, writing:
“Grief never ends. But it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love."
"Remembering Chadwick Boseman. Forever.”
The actor also praised the MCU film, featuring a largely Black cast, for exceeding expectations with commercial success and love from fans.
“There was a lot of fear, definitely from the executives," recalled Nyong'o, adding:
"Marvel was shaking a little bit in their boots!”
“We were too because we were like, we only get to do this once. And we gotta do it right.”
She said the film “totally shattered the myth that Black doesn’t sell.”
Nyong'o was there to promote her latest animated film, The Wild Robot, for which she has lent her voice.
The conversation turned to her appearances in horror films like Little Monsters, Jordan Peele’s Us, and the sequel to A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place: Day One.
"I really much prefer doing the scaring than being scared,” said the 41-year-old.
“It’s not so much that I go seeking horror out. But I do think that horror films give you a lot of room to play. … It allows you to explore emotions that you would otherwise repress: anger, fear, anxiety."
"I think that’s what’s great about being in them as an actor and also what appeals to people.”
She also touched on the notion of "fear of failure" after she was cast in her breakthrough role straight out of Yale drama school in 2013's historical drama 12 Years a Slave, for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
She said:
“This is the pinnacle of people’s careers. I was like, ‘where am I supposed to go from here?’"
“Before I went to drama school, I’d never watched the Oscars. … It was abstract. The year before I was at the Academy Awards, I was in my pajamas watching the Academy Awards. It was really surreal.”
Regarding her designation as being one of 10 Black actors to win an acting Oscar, Nyong'o said:
“I had to ignore the racial significance of what it means to an entire community of people, because I had to live my life step by step.”
“I was trained to expect to struggle as an actor, so when my first job came with all these exponential opportunities, I could feel myself tensing up.”
Jane Rosenberg
Jane Rosenberg
@arianagrande/Instagram
@arianagrande/Instagram