What you need to know
Chadwick Boseman will be posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Boseman, who died of colon cancer in 2020 at the age of 43, will have a memorial service on November 20th. Billboard reported that Ryan Coogler, who directed Boseman in “Black Panther,” and Viola Davis, who co-starred with Boseman in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” will speak at the ceremony. Mr. Boseman’s wife, Simone Ledward Boseman, will receive the honor.
The Star in Bozeman is located at 6904 Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, according to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
“The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is honored to honor Chadwick Boseman’s extraordinary achievements with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” Hollywood Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez said in a statement, according to Billboard. “His powerful performances and lasting impact on and off screen continue to inspire generations around the world.”
The actor, who has built a career on playing prominent figures in American black history, was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award in 2021 for his role as troubled trumpeter Levee Greene in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The film is an adaptation of August Wilson’s 1982 play of the same name, which fictionalizes Ma Rainey’s dramatic recording sessions in 1920s Chicago.
His performance won him a Golden Globe, a Critics Circle Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, with Ledward-Boseman accepting the award on his behalf.
Davis, 60, said in December 2020 that she “broke down” when she learned of Boseman’s death.
“Lord knows we all hope he lives another 50 years. We all want a long life,” she told Yahoo! “But I don’t see his life as tragic at all. … Because I felt like he was always living in the moment, squeezing every inch of his life out of life. What that made me think is, it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.”
She added of her former co-star, “My take on Chad is that he lived his life his way. I think his professional life was exactly the same as his personal life. That’s just my guess in terms of how authentically he lived his life.”
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Bozeman’s career breakthrough came in 2013, when he stepped up to the plate as Jackie Robinson, the first black player in modern Major League Baseball history (1942).
The actor received critical acclaim for his roles as James Brown in 2014’s “Get on Up” and Thurgood Marshall in 2017’s “Marshall.” Marshall was the first black person to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. The film depicts Marshall early in his career defending Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), a black man accused of a crime he was not guilty of.
The dedication ceremony in Bozeman will be livestreamed on WalkOfFame.com.
