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Tue 4 August 2026 21:15, UK
Even though his film career only lasted a dozen years, Chadwick Boseman made enough of an impression on the industry that his impact will be felt for some time to come.
While the actor will always be best remembered as Marvel’s Black Panther, and deservedly so, when the comic book adaptation proved to be a watershed moment for Hollywood in more ways than one, with countless stars and filmmakers celebrating its success, he made the most of his tragically short-lived stardom.
It speaks volumes about the man Boseman was that when he made his debut as a full-fledged producer on 2019’s action thriller, 21 Bridges, he voluntarily gave up part of his salary so that co-star Sienna Miller could be paid what she believed she was worth for playing the female lead, and she’ll never forget it.
The posthumous Academy Award nominee also made millions of dollars in charitable donations to help various causes, and by playing iconic and inspirational real-life figures like Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall, he didn’t want to be one of those actors who leveraged their stardom to land bigger paycheques and higher-profile franchise roles.
From the beginning, he was a man of conviction, and when he was offered the chance to share an ensemble cast with an actor he’d always admired from afar, he considered turning it down based on one scene. If his demands weren’t met, then he wouldn’t do the movie; simple as that.
2014’s Draft Day won’t be remembered as the best movie of Boseman’s or Kevin Costner’s careers, with the sports drama earning solid-if-unspectacular notices and flopping at the box office. A sequence with two characters talking on the telephone doesn’t sound like it would lead to a non-negotiable demand, but in the former’s case, it did.
“That was one of the things about the role; I was adamant that I actually had to do my scenes with him,” Boseman said, referring to the fact that most of his work in Draft Day involved his character, a college linebacker with dreams of the NFL, talking on the phone with Costner’s general manager of the Cleveland Browns.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
“We really are talking to each other,” he explained. “It’s not always true with phone scenes, but what’s the sense of doing a movie with Kevin Costner if you’re not going to be talking to Kevin Costner? That was a deal-breaker; if I’m not talking to him, I don’t want to do the movie.”
In most movies, when two people are being shot for a phone call, they’re filmed separately, and it’s spliced together in post-production. In this instance, Boseman refused to sign on for Draft Day if he and Costner weren’t shooting those calls in the same space at the same time, and he got his wish.
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