Martin Freeman says filming 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' without Chadwick Boseman was 'strange and sad'
- Martin Freeman has spoken about filming "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" without Chadwick Boseman.
- Boseman passed away of colon cancer in August 2020 at the age of 43.
Martin Freeman has spoken about returning to film "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" after the death of Chadwick Boseman in 2020.
Speaking to Collider, Freeman said that filming without Boseman — who played the titular Black Panther/T'Challa in the 2018 original — was "strange and sad."
"On the one hand, you're making the film that you're there to make, and there are scores and scores of people on set, joined in this endeavor to make the film. But there's also no question that, at the heart of it, there's quite a gap now, and you felt it," Freeman said. "With full respect to Ryan Coogler and everybody else, who's sweating and bleeding to get this thing done properly, it was fun."
Freeman said that although his character, CIA Agent Everett Ross, "is a very fun character to play," his experience on set "was odd" without Boseman.
"There's no way around that. I think everyone would find it pretty strange and sad, but at the same time, life things don't just end. It's not like, 'Well, that's that's happened, so we just all have to go off and never do it again.' But it was odd," the actor explained.
"When he passed, I thought, 'Okay, well maybe there just won't be another one,'" the "Sherlock" star added. "But there are still other stories to tell within that world and other great characters. I think, and I hope that we've made a good film. I trust Ryan Coogler a lot."
Freeman is not the only "Black Panther" cast member to discuss the absence of Boseman.
Angela Bassett, who plays Ramonda, the mother of Boseman's Black Panther, spoke to The Guardian last year about how the loss of Boseman affected the cast.
"Everyone felt, the first week of shooting, the presence of Chadwick and missing him on that throne," she said. "But we all came together and just paid homage to him before we began, which was wonderful … everyone just speaking beautiful words about him and expressing how much we care and how he informed and inspired us."