A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will be unveiled Thursday, honoring the late actor Chadwick Boseman for a career that mixed portraying the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero T’Challa with historical figures.
Ryan Coogler and Viola Davis are set to speak at the 11:30 a.m. PT ceremony across from the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.
Coogler directed Boseman in “Black Panther” and its 2022 sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
When Boseman portrayed singer James Brown in the 2014 biographical musical “Get On Up,” Davis portrayed Brown’s mother Susie. In “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Boseman’s final film, Davis played strong-willed blues singer Ma Rainey, and Boseman played Levee Green, the overconfident trumpeter in Rainey’s band.
Boseman received a best actor Oscar nomination for the role in 2021 and won the Golden Globe for best actor in a motion picture drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role.
The star will be accepted by Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward-Boseman.
Boseman died of colon cancer in 2020 at age 43.
The star is the 2,828th since the completion of the Walk of Fame in 1961 with the initial 1,558 stars.
All Walk of Fame ceremonies are streamed on walkoffame.com, and can later be seen on YouTube.com/@HwdWalkofFame.
Born Nov. 29, 1976 in Anderson, South Carolina, Boseman showed an interest in the performing arts early on, writing his first play while in high school.
Boseman graduated from Howard University in 2000 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in directing. His professors included Phylicia Rashad, the Howard alum best known for her portrayal of Claire Huxtable on 1984-92 NBC comedy, “The Cosby Show.”
“Unrelenting in his pursuit of excellence, Chadwick was possessed with a passion for inquiry and a determination to tell stories – through acting, writing, and directing – that revealed the beauty and complexity of our human spirit,” Rashad said in a statement in 2021, when Howard’s newly reestablished College of Fine Arts was named in honor of Boseman.
Boseman was among the students who orchestrated the ultimately unsuccessful protest against the absorption of the College of Fine Arts into the College of Arts & Sciences. Plans to re-establish the College of Fine Arts were announced in early 2018.
Boseman was a New York City-based stage actor and director at the of his career. He was a member of the National Shakespeare Company of New York, portraying Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet” and Malcolm in “Macbeth.”
Boseman made his television debut in a 2003 episode of the NBC crime drama “Third Watch.” He was cast later that year in the ABC daytime drama “All My Children,” but was fired after a week after voicing concerns about racial stereotypes with the character. He was replaced by his future “Black Panther” co-star Michael B. Jordan. Boseman moved to Los Angeles in 2008. He was cast in a recurring role in the ABC Family drama “Lincoln Heights” as an Army veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Boseman made his feature film debut in the 2008 biopic, “The Express: The Ernie Davis Story” as future Pro and College Football Hall of Fame running back Floyd Little, who is successfully recruited to play for Syra by leukemia-stricken Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ernie Davis (Rob Brown).
Boseman became a cast member of a prime-time series for the first time in the NBC psychological thriller “Persons Unknown,” which ran for 13 episodes in the summer of 2010. Boseman had his breakout role in the 2013 biopic “42” as groundbreaking baseball star Jackie Robinson.
Boseman became part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the 2016 release of “Captain America: Civil War” as T’Challa, a prince of the fictional African nation of Wakanda who holds the appointed title of Black Panther.
Boseman became the first Black actor to be the lead of an MCU movie with “Black Panther” which was released in 2018. He also portrayed the character in the MCU films “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” and the Disney+ anthology series “What If…?” receiving a posthumous Primetime Emmy in 2022 for outstanding character voice-over performance. Boseman’s other film credits included “Marshall,” portraying Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice, “Draft Day,” “21 Bridges” and “Da 5 Bloods.”
