Many people felt a serious loss after it was announced in 2020 that Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman died at 43 following a four-year battle with colon cancer. His final movie, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, garnered him a posthumous Oscar nomination, but he lost the Best Actor award to Anthony Hopkins. Now, Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward Boseman, is speaking about what she would have said if her husband had won that Academy Award.
X (then called Twitter) wasn’t happy with Boseman’s Oscar loss. That's somewhat understandable, given it would have been a beautiful celebration of the late actor’s final performance. Not only that but, considering that Best Actor was made the final award of that year's Academy Awards, it seemed certain that the evening was being set up to culminate with a win for Boseman. Ledward Boseman spoke to THR, as part of its oral history on the COVID-tinged ceremony of 2021, about how she would have honored her late husband had he won a posthumous Oscar:
I had written a whole speech. I wonder if I have it in my Notes.
When Chadwick Boseman won a lot of posthumous awards ahead of the 93rd Academy Awards, Simone Ledward accepted them on her late husband’s behalf. She tearfully accepted the Gotham Award for him, shared her husband’s wonderful quote while accepting his SAG Award, and gave an emotional acceptance speech for his Golden Globe win.
Article continues belowSo, if the 42 actor had won the Oscar, Ledward would've had some sweet sentiments to share. During her chat with the trade, Ledward found her remarks and recited them:
Oh! It says: ‘I will never stop thanking God for you. Thank you to the most high God. Thank you, Carolyn and Leroy Boseman [Chadwick’s parents], and your mothers, and your mothers’ mothers. What purity. What honesty. What pain. What a role. What work. What beautiful, intricate humanity. What courage, bravery, fearlessness, honesty, commitment, humanity, strength. A spirit that refused to surrender to despair. What an actor. What an artist. What a cast. What a team. What a vision. Glory be to the most high God. Long live the King.’
That was so beautiful! The fact that Boseman’s widow still kept that speech on her phone after all of these years is heartbreakingly beautiful. As deserving as Anthony Hopkins was of his Oscar for The Father, it would've been sweet to hear Ledward Boseman honor her husband’s praiseworthy performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
When discussing that era of COVID as a whole, Ledward recalled how the lockdown impacted her and Boseman's lives. Fully cognizant of how hard that time was for a lot of people, Ledward shared a positive take on how it affected her life:
It’s so strange to talk about it in these words because obviously with COVID so many people lost loved ones. But the timing of lockdown for what we were going through was honestly ideal. I am really grateful for that time.
As for Hopkins, he wasn’t present at the ceremony, but he honored Boseman in an acceptance video, which was played the night of the ceremony. The veteran actor said he “didn’t expect to get this award,” and he also took a moment to “pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who was taken from us far too early.”
Ledward told THR she found Hopkins’ speech “very beautiful” and found it “thoughtful” of him to even mention her late spouse. It's still sad to think that the talented Boseman is no longer with us, but it's clear that his legacy lives on in those who knew him or admired his work.
You can watch Chadwick Boseman’s final Oscar-nominated role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by streaming it using a Netflix subscription.
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