In his new movies, the actor is portraying two very different superheroes.
Chadwick Boseman’s rising star will reach its zenith come February. That’s when “Black Panther” hits theaters, taking the 40-year-old actor from Marvel bit player ― first introduced in last year’s “Captain America: Civil War” ― to full-blown exemplar. No pressure: He’s only bringing the first black superhero in mainstream comics to the big screen. No pressure at all.
In the meantime, Boseman has suited up to portray a different superhero: Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice. The new movie “Marshall,” which opens Friday, depicts its title subject before he donned the highest court’s robes. It chronicles a 1941 case in which Marshall, then an estimable NAACP attorney, defends a chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) falsely accused of raping a white socialite (Kate Hudson).
Boseman knows his way around a biopic. His breakout, in 2013, was playing baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in “42.” One year later, he cut a rug as an uncanny James Brown in “Get On Up.” Across these three roles, Boseman displays a gravitas unrivaled by the many actors who spend years toiling through the staid genre. He imbues in each man a paradox: swagger meets hardship. Galvanizing professional victories contrast their world-weariness.
I caught up with Boseman last month at the “Marshall” junket in New York, toward the end of a long day in which he endured consecutive interviews. We discussed his entry into the Marvel world, the pronounced resonance of “Marshall” in light of Donald Trump’s presidency and whether “Black Panther” will become a cultural litmus test in the vein of “Wonder Woman.”
You’re the biopic king.
No, no, I think Leo’s still got me.
None of the real people you’ve portrayed were alive at the time, which could be a pro or a con. On the one hand, you don’t have to answer to them once the movie opens …
Who said that? James Brown, you’ve got to answer to him regardless of whether he’s dead or alive. He’ll come back and get you.
The ghost of James Brown looms. But, on the other hand, you don’t get to pick their brains, if that is indeed the method you would use to prepare. With “Marshall,” you also don’t have the same physical prep. You didn’t have to do splits or learn baseball.
Right, but acting is always physical. I don’t have to dance or play baseball, but there is a physicality to Marshall. There’s a difference between the older man in the robes and the young, wiry version of Thurgood Marshall. I was coming off of “Captain America: Civil War,” so it was important that I didn’t look like T’Challa in those suits. He couldn’t look, like, super cut up in those suits. There’s still the physicality of it, and there’s still, to me, a sense of the physicality of the time period. It is the Harlem Renaissance and the jazz era, so although I didn’t want to imitate what his voice might sound like or imitate his exact physicality, I did want to find the swagger or the rhythm of that time. So that is still very physical.
You came off of one Black Panther project, did “Marshall” and then made another Black Panther movie. Did you bulk up, slim down and then bulk up again?
[Nods his head, looking exhausted] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You’ve been through the wringer.
Oh, you don’t even know [laughs]. You have no idea. One day I’ll live to tell the story.
Is it becoming second nature, regulating your diet and changing your physique between projects?
I don’t think that could ever be second nature. You know what I’m saying? When you’re talking about something like that, you’re talking about habits. You’re talking about getting up in the morning at a certain time and doing certain exercises or meditations. Whatever it is, it’s not natural. You don’t accidentally fall out of bed and start exercising. So there’s always going to be, especially after the first day when you’re pumped and ready to go do it, that morning when you wake up and you’re like, “I do not feel like doing it today.” I had my trainer for “Black Panther” with me on “Marshall,” so there was a certain period of time where I had to begin, not necessarily the physical transformation, but the methodology of doing one thing between doing the other.
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