Please welcome Chadwick Boseman.
(cheering and applause)
Oh, dude.
I didn't expect you to do that.
-(chuckles) Yo. -Welcome. Welcome to the...
-What do you mean, you didn't expect me to do that? -Oh, man.
Everywhere you go now, for the rest of your life
you will be greeted like this.
You are... you are not lying.
You are the king of Wakanda, my friend. Congratulations.
-Thank you. Thank you, man. -(cheering and applause)
-Congratulations. -Oh, wow.
I've been a fan of yours for such a long time,
and I've watched you go from film to film,
and you've played some of the most iconic people on-screen.
But there is something truly different and magical
about this character.
Could you feel it when you were making Black Panther?
Uh, I think... I think the whole cast,
we know how special this project could be.
Um, we knew what the comic book was.
We knew with the...
you know, with the-with the whole idea
of this technologically advanced nation,
uh, i-in Africa that, you know,
essentially they're the oldest people on the planet.
-Right. -That's that-that idea,
that, um, it was a revolutionary one
that we knew we could throw a lot of our passion into.
And we didn't know how people would receive it.
We didn't know, um, you know,
that it would be this sort of impact that...
-Right. -We knew, uh, that it would be important
to see a black superhero.
Um, we knew that would be interesting.
We knew that, you know,
once people saw what these women were,
that that would impact some people, but you don't know
if that's gonna be a niche, um, group of people that love it.
And you also don't know if it's going to, um...
you know, if-if the studio's
going to put everything they can into it.
-Right. -And I have to give Marvel credit
and Disney credit for, um, you know...
-throwing the book at it. (laughs) -Right.
-Essentially is what they did. -That's really what they did.
I mean, like, the marketing worldwide,
uh, the way the story was presented,
everyone on the cast.
Because what made the story special was--
I don't know if it was just me-- it feels
like Black Panther's powers come
not just from his suit but from his people.
-From his tradition. Yeah, yeah. -From his tradition.
From his tribe. From the... from the women around him.
It was really special to see a situation
where it didn't feel like anyone was a sidekick.
It felt like everyone was part of a team.
Was that something that-that you were focusing on,
-in the way you treated your stars in every scene? -Yes.
Absolutely. Um, I-I felt like,
in order for him to be a good king,
you know, one of the good signs
of-of someone who is wise is they...
-is that they disseminate responsibility. -Right.
Um, and so I-I felt that, you know,
his father would have taught him, you know,
use everybody's skills. Don't try to do everything.
-Right. -Um, you can't... you can't be everywhere at one time.
So it was important for Danai
-to be as strong as she is. -Uh-huh.
It was important for Lupita to be as strong as she is.
Um, and-and I felt like, um,
you know, what we had,
as far as, you know, there's no real...
I don't think there's a villain in this movie.
I think you have two sides of the same coin,
-with the Kill-Killmonger story -Right.
-and the T-Challa story. -That's an interesting... Yeah.
Um, you know, we treated it that way.
Michael and I kept ourselves separate
and came together at a certain point
so that we could create this sort of tension on scene, but...
on-on... in the scenes. But it was... it was...
it was a collaboration, I think, for everybody,
-when we worked together. -That's an interesting idea,
that there was no... there was no villain.
It was two sides of a story.
I mean, more than ever, in America right now,
people feel like, "Oh, there's a villain. There's no villain.
There's..." It feels like every story needs to have that,
but that's what made Black Panther so complicated.
I won't give any spoilers away, but it felt
like a story where you truly did not know how you felt.
-Mm. -You just had to work on how you felt about what the...
how the people were trying to do what they were trying to do.
-Well, it doesn't let anybody off the hook. -Right.
You know what I'm saying? Like, and I-I think that's... -Right.
that's the key thing, is that, I think, when you-you...
-Everybody is the hero in their own story, you know? -Right.
Like-like, you should be the hero in your own story.
-You should be, um... -(cheering and applause)
...you know...
You-you should see yourself conquering,
um, you know,
the dramatic action of whatever you're trying to do.
So when you get to crisis, you know,
you know how to deal with it. You should be able to do that.
And there are people that come in and help you with your story,
but you have to be the person who-who deals
with the conflicts that are in place. Nobody else c...
-There's no deus ex machina that's gonna come in -Right.
and-and save it for you. Even if you pray to God,
God expects you to do some things.
So I think, um, you have to be that hero.
I-I know that I felt that, and I connected
with so many of the characters in different ways,
um, not just because of who they were and what they were doing
but also because of home.
Like, I was really impressed by the fact
that everyone in the movie had an African accent.
And what was cool was, it was African accents
-from different places. -Mm-hmm.
You know, like, M'Baku had... had a Nigerian-inspired accent.
-That's right. -You know, and Nakia had an accent
that had a flair, like a bit of...
a bit of Kenya and the...
And-And T'Challa came out, and there was a moment
in the movie where I was watching you, and I was like,
"Why does this sound like a little bit
-of a young Nelson Mandela?" There was like a... -Mm-hmm.
Was there, like, a Khoisan inspiration behind the accent?
Absolutely, absolutely. Uh, my-my, you know...
That was... that was the, um...
-the-the sound of my dialect coach. -Oh, wow.
And so, I wanted that sound, um, specifically because
I felt like the clicks are an indication...
Like, it's believed that-that... that languages
that have the clicks-- they're among the oldest.
-Right, right, right. -And so I felt...
I felt like that was a great sound
for this... for this particular character.
And, um, you know...
The point that you just brought up
about each body, each person having a different sound--
we felt like we were taking the continent
-and sort of closing it in. -Right.
Like, compressing it and saying,
"Everything that we love about the continent came from here."
-Right, right, right. -So you can pull from every place
'cause there's a dispersion from this... from Wakanda.
So, yes, she could have a Kenyan hint in her accent.
Um, it also allows each actor to bring things
that are close to them, um, to the story.
-Right. -So, as opposed to, like...
Some people might be like, "Well, you can't just have
"this generalized Africa where people are...
are, um, picking from anything they want."
But if... but if it comes from an organic truth
-and an organic DNA... -Uh-huh.
...which is what we did, then...
and everybody's on the same page,
then it becomes something that is real, so...
Was a part of you worried, though,
that everyone having African accents would be something
that, like, the studio
or even moviegoers wouldn't gravitate towards?
I... I wasn't worried. Um...
(laughter)
So somebody was worried.
-Somebody was worried. -I wasn't there.
(applause)
Yeah, I wasn't worried, because I had seen,
um, you know...
I'd seen, um, uh, John Kani...
-Right. -...doing Shakespeare.
You know what I'm saying? I'd seen...
Who plays my father in the film.
I had seen, um, you know, uh,
-African Zulu Macbeth. -Right, right, right.
You know, I'd seen that before.
So I knew... I already knew it worked.
-I had seen that from my college years... -Right.
...that this could work.
You know, other people hadn't seen that.
So I knew that an African accent could carry
all of that passion in The English language,
you know, just as well as a British one could,
if not better.
Um, and so, uh, you know, for me, there was a...
When I heard things like, "People can't listen to that,
you know, for an entire film if..."
You know? They were just talking about me doing it.
I was, like, "No, we're gonna go to Wakanda one day."
(laughter)
And if... in my mind, I was like,
if I have a British accent right now, what's...
what's gonna happen?
(laughter)
When the rest of the nation is speaking with a British accent.
-I'm just picturing that scene. -It would be horrible.
I'm just picturing that cut-out of the movie right now.
It's, like, Black Panther coming back,
and everyone's like, "My King, you have returned." He's like,
(British accent): "Well, hello there. Yes?
-Yeah. -Well, hello. Good to be back."
When we were debating it, I had that nightmare.
-(laughter) -I had that nightmare.
I was like, "No, boy."
The movie connected with so many people
on so many levels, um...
and one thing I really enjoyed was...
I got to watch the film in New York City.
I got to watch the film with many different people
from different walks of life.
I've watched how it touched many African Americans.
What I also loved, though, was how that authenticity
-translated back to Africa, back to South Africa. -Right.
I saw people back home who embraced the movie
just as much as people did here.
Which is not an easy thing to do,
because Africans get portrayed in a certain way in film,
and a lot of the time I won't lie, we watch movies,
and we're like, who-who are they trying to imitate right now?
-Right. -What part of Africa is this?
-Right. -But people loved it back home.
People loved it in the motherland.
Was that something that was important for you?
Did that touch you?
It... I can't even put into words what that feels like,
because... because...
you know, on both sides, as an African American
and, you know, seeing people from the continent,
I see... I've seen a divide for my entire life.
-Right. -You know.
I've, you know, grew up, and I remember hearing the term
"African booty scratchers" as an insult.
-Right, right, right. -You know, I remember that.
Um, and then I... and then I went through my phase
of trying to find Africa, and not knowing,
-well, which place am I from, you know? -Wow.
And I've seen Africans who viewed us in a particular way
-where "You're not connected." -Right.
"You don't know where you're from."
And at the same time, love parts of our culture.
So there's, like, this weird... there's been this weird dynamic.
-Uh-huh. -You know, I don't know the oral tradition,
because I didn't grow up with it, you know, from...
You know, if I... if I knew exactly where I came from,
growing up, I would have had an oral tradition from that place.
-Right. -I-I... I've never had that.
So this movie, in a certain way, creates a story
that we all share.
And it's the first time that's...
I feel like that's ever happened,
-I feel like that, yeah. -where... where...
it's, like, okay, that's our story, that's our story, too.
I think part of that is because, um...
you have these two, um, characters
-who have this collision, -Right.
and they have to go through each other
and find out about each other.
So even in fighting, there is a...
there's a sense of kinship among them, and I...
you know, I think it's portrayed on screen
-where people accept it. -It's portrayed,
it's welcomed, it's electric,
and it's gonna make billion dollars plus, so...
-(cheering, applause) -congratulations.
It's so amazing having you on the show.
-Thank you for everything you've done. -Thank you.
-I appreciate you. -Oh, my God.
Black Panther is in theaters now.
Chadwick Boseman, everyone.