Lupita Nyong’o told People magazine that her cancer storyline in “A Quiet Place: Day One” was “very therapeutic” to film after she lost her “Black Panther” co-star and friend Chadwick Boseman to colon cancer in 2020. Boseman was 43 years old. In the prequel film, which earned the horror franchise’s biggest opening weekend yet with $53 million, Nyong’o stars as a terminally ill cancer patient who is in hospice care when the movie begins.
“It was scary to have to go there,” Nyong’o said about taking on a character who “is really facing their mortality, even before this apocalypse takes place, and whose life is slipping between her fingers. That was daunting to have to go there, psychologically and emotionally.”
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But her connection with Boseman made the process a lot more impactful, Nyong’o admitted. The two starred together in Marvel’s “Black Panther.” Boseman died before filming started on the comic book sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which Nyong’o returned for. He kept his colon cancer diagnosis private during the filming and publicity for “Black Panther.”
“In the end, it was actually very therapeutic because I had just experienced not too many years ago the death of Chadwick Boseman, which shook me to my core,” Nyong’o told People. “I definitely was thinking about that a lot.”
“What I came to realize is that it’s really important to be reminded of our mortality, because then we live life just a little more intentionally,” she added. “When we think we have all the time in the world, we can really take people for granted and experiences for granted.”
Nyong’o has publicly paid tribute to Boseman several times since his death in August 2020. She marked the three-year anniversary of his death last year by sharing a photo of the two on social media and writing: “Death is hard to understand, maybe even harder to accept. But the love generated from the life he lived will fuel every anniversary marking his absence. Chadwick may no longer be in our photos, but he will always be in our hearts.”
“A Quiet Place: Day One” is now playing in theaters nationwide from Paramount Pictures.
