Chadwick Boseman’s wife Simone Ledward Boseman has revealed the speech she would have given in honor of her late husband if he had won the 2021 Academy Awards.
“I have the whole speech written,” Simone, 35, told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday. “Is it in the notes (app)?”
Simone read what she had written to the press after finding the draft on her phone.
“It says, ‘I will never stop thanking God for you. Thank you God Most High. Thank you Carolyn and Leroy Boseman (Chadwick’s parents) and your mother and your mother’s mother,'” she began. “What purity. What honesty. What pain. What a role. What a job. What a beautiful, complex humanity. What courage, bravery, fearlessness, integrity, dedication, humanity, strength.”
Months after his tragic death, Chadwick was posthumously nominated for Best Actor for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He lost out to Anthony Hopkins in “The Father.”
“A spirit that refused to give in to despair,” Simone said of her husband, who died in 2020 at age 43 after a battle with colon cancer. “What an actor. What an artist. What a cast. What a team. What a vision. Glory to the Most High. Long live the King.”
Despite missing out on the Oscar, Simone felt honored that her husband was nominated.
“But being nominated for Best Actor is still an incredible accomplishment and recognition of his work,” she said. “I don’t think it was the producer’s intention for it to be offensive…In retrospect, I wish Best Picture had been the last one.”
“It would have been a nice reset for those who were able to hopefully get up on stage and accept their awards and give speeches and things like that, to have one more moment of celebration before the end of the night.”
Chadwick ultimately won posthumous trophies at the 2021 Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globe Awards.
In her acceptance speech at that year’s Globe Awards, Simone said the “Black Panther” star “has a habit of telling the truth.”
“He’s the most honest person I’ve ever met, because he didn’t stop at just telling the truth,” she elaborated. “He actively sought it out: in himself, in those around him, and in this moment. Truth is something that is all too easily avoided by oneself, but without living it, it is impossible to live in alignment with the divine purpose for one’s life. And that became the way he lived his life, imperfectly but determinedly, day in and day out.”
Simone has continued to pay tribute to her late spouse over the years, most recently attending Chadwick’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2025.
