“No paprika.”
“No paprika, no.”
This had me bawling my eyes out this morning. What a damn loss.
Wow. Yeah. He looks very sick in that picture.
It reminds me of Rock Hudson’s appearance with Doris Day shortly before she died; my mother hollered to my father in the next room to “Come in here and see Rock Hudson - he’s really sick!” and then it was revealed that he had AIDS.
This also reminds me of the response to Neil Peart’s death earlier this year. The respect he got from the entertainment world is also near-universal, and even many people who knew him personally had no idea he was that sick.
ABC is airing Black Panther tonight, guessing that wasn’t pre-planned. After there will be a tribute show.
Brian
Unless I missed something, he wasn’t in 12 Years a Slave.
He was not. Mr I Never Remember How to Pronounce His Name no Matter How Many Times I See Him starred in that. Boseman was making 42 at that time.
Well, don’t I feel stupid!
Well, that was certainly not my intent! I used to get a young Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman mixed up all the time, heck, I only recently learned that Stellan Skarsgard and Peter Sarsgaard aren’t an acting family. --Face palm–
It’s Chiwetel Ejiofor in that movie. Another great actor, by the way. I wonder if he was up for Black Panther. People always want him for James Bond or the Doctor.
Sad news. BP was a really big deal in Africa.
Stellan doesn’t need Peter, he’s produced enough of an acting family already 
It’s hard to tell with these things because Marvel and Feige do plan things out long in advance. Boseman first appeared as Black Panther in Captain America Civil War in 2016. Ejiofor also appeared in 2016 as a Marvel character. He is Baron Mordo in Doctor Strange and will appear in the sequels. Maybe he was up for the role of Black Panther or maybe they already had him slotted for the role they wanted him to play.
I always thought that it was slightly odd that he was the first out of the portals in Endgame and that the camera focused slightly too long on him, it makes a lot more sense now. RIP.
Are you suggesting they knew he was ill or something?
I assume they knew, yes. Seems impossible that he could deal with this while filming and not let anyone know, if anything some accommodations had to have been required for treatment.
Anyway, I think the writers just needed one person(well, one lead superhero) to step through first. Black Panther works well for this role. I can’t see it being Dr. Strange, Spider-man, or any of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I think Black Panther carries the biggest weight and is a leader in his own right. Him showing up just works best.
Everything I’ve read has suggested that nobody outside his doctors and immediate family knew. I think his entrance in Endgame had more to do with the billion+ dollars his movie had earned than anything else.
Also, his role in Endgame is pretty limited. He just shows up for the big fight at the end, and that was all green screens and CGI. They could have filmed his part pretty much any time during production, and it was likely only a day or two of in-studio work for him. It’s not like he needed to be on a set, or sync up his schedule with another actor so they could do a scene together.
Don’t the studios require that key cast members get thorough physical exams prior to starting production of big, expensive movies like this? Wouldn’t they have become aware of his illness?
According to the reports, Feige received an email about Boseman on August 28, just a few hours before he died. (The actor appears to have sincerely believed he would survive the disease until something like a week before his death.) Before that, almost no one outside Boseman’s family—excepting his agent, his trainer, producing partner Logan Coles, and 42 director Brian Helgeland—even knew he had cancer, let alone what his prognosis was. Per the same THR report, it’s typically uncommon for major studio features to require medical screenings for their stars, since completion of films on that level is rarely an insurance matter—especially when the star in question is as young as Boseman was.
…Ryan Coogler, director of Black Panther, makes it clear that he “wasn’t privy to the details of his illness.” So he might have known he was sick, but nothing more than that. And he had been writing the Black Panther 2 script with Boseman at the heart of it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/30/entertainment/ryan-coogler-chadwick-boseman-statement/index.html
And this story from Clark Peters talks about how he thought Boseman was “a little bit precious” because he was surrounded by people who were “fawning over him” and that the “Black Panther” thing had gone to his head. But he realizes in hindsight that the “fawning” was actually him being looked after for his illness. 
They actually shot both movies back to back in 2017. Both were wrapped before Black Panther was even released. And considering the climactic battle of Infinity War took place in Wakanda, it makes perfect cinematic sense that the first people through a portal should be people dusted in Wakanda. (From a practical point of view, Dr. Strange should have sent Spider-Man and the Guardians through first, then opened all the other portals.)