Viola Davis has never shied away from speaking her truth, but the latest truth she revealed about the late Chadwick Boseman just might surprise you. And now, she’s opening up about it.
Speaking in a new interview with the UK platform The Times over the weekend, Davis reflected on the last time she collaborated with the late actor back in 2020. The two starred together in the Netflix film, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” for which Boseman garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Filming for the project took place in the summertime of 2019, right when the “Black Panther” star was deep in his battle with colon cancer.
When asked about the experience working with Boseman, Davis explained how she observed him frequently being attended to by his then-girlfriend Simone Ledward and his makeup artist. Noting that she often witnessed him receiving back rubs and listening to meditative music, the “How to Get Away With Murder” star admitted to being critical at the time about the ailing actor.
“There was a part of me that was a little judgmental—‘why do you need all that?’ Little did I know that they were doing it because he was dying,” Davis said. To be clear, nobody working on the film knew Boseman was struggling.
Davis’ sentiments echo that of fellow actor Clarke Peters, who starred alongside Boseman in the Spike Lee-directed film “Da Five Bloods,” back in 2020. Calling the “21 Bridges” star “precious,” Peters told Entertainment Weekly at the time:
“He’s surrounded by people who are fawning over him. He has a Chinese practitioner, who is massaging his back when he walks off set. He has a makeup lady massaging his feet. His girlfriend is there holding his hand. And I’m thinking maybe the Black Panther’ thing went to his head.”
In hindsight and after learning of Boseman’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death, Peters said he regretted ever thinking those thoughts. Not too long after Boseman passed away, Davis also had glowing words for the late actor, telling In Style in 2020: “He was someone who had a quality that very few have today, whether young or old, which is a total commitment to the art form of acting.”