Viola Davis Shares Deep Regret Over Chadwick Boseman Five Years After His Death

EGOT winner Viola Davis is speaking candidly about a regret that’s lingered with her for years, her initial judgment of Chadwick Boseman’s behavior and support system on the set of "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom," unaware at the time that he was battling terminal cancer.

Viola Davis opened up about her experience working with Boseman, who passed away from colon cancer in August 2020 at just 43 years old, three months before the release of the Netflix film, which marked his final screen performance.

“There was a part of me that was a little judgmental, why do you need all that?” Davis recalled in a heartfelt new interview with The Times, referring to Boseman's fiancée, Taylor Simone Ledward, and his makeup artist rubbing his back and playing meditative music between takes. “Little did I know that they were doing it because he was dying.”

Davis said no one on set knew Boseman was sick. The "Black Panther" star had kept his diagnosis private since learning in 2016 he had stage III colon cancer. By the time he died, it had progressed to stage IV.

His portrayal of Levee Green in "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom," a story centered around a fiery young trumpeter and the legendary blues singer, earned Boseman a posthumous Oscar nomination. Reflecting on his legacy, Davis has always spoken of him with admiration and reverence.

In a 2020 interview with Yahoo Entertainment, she remembered his ability to live fully, even while enduring so much privately. “Lord knows we all would’ve wanted him to live another 50 years,” she said at the time. “But I can’t see his life tragically at all … Because I felt like he was always living in the moment, squeezing out every bit of life.”

“What it makes me think is, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality,” she continued. “What I hold onto with Chad is that he lived his life his way. I would say his professional life absolutely paralleled his personal life … with the utmost integrity.”

Davis also previously told InStyle that Boseman was “someone who had a quality that very few have today, whether young or old, which is a total commitment to the art form of acting.”

​Boseman passed away on August 28, 2020, at the age of 43, after a private four-year battle with colon cancer. Diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, the disease progressed to stage IV before his death. Despite undergoing multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, Boseman continued to work on several films.

The late actor chose to keep his illness private, leading to widespread shock upon the announcement of his passing. His family released a statement on his official Instagram account, expressing their immeasurable grief and highlighting his dedication to his craft even during treatment. ​

Now, Davis is turning her focus to her next big role, one that’s completely different from anything she’s done before.

In "G20," premiering April 10 on Prime Video, she stars as U.S. President Danielle Sutton, a leader thrust into crisis when a terrorist seizes the world’s most powerful leaders during a G20 summit.

At the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Thursday, Davis revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that the project has been close to her heart since 2016, when she signed on as both star and producer. “It was just different for us, it seemed like a very commercial, fun movie, out of the box; something that people wouldn’t normally see me in but that I was very capable of.”

As President Sutton, Davis is tasked with saving not only global diplomacy but her family and the fate of democracy itself. The action-packed role gave the EGOT winner a new physical challenge, something she embraced with enthusiasm.

“This was more fisticuffs; this was more like street fighting, guns,” she explained. “This appealed to 6-year-old Viola — 6-year-old Viola would have been squealing with this one.”

The film required Davis to think creatively during stunt choreography.

“We choreographed a lot of these fight scenes on the set; you had to use your imagination with found objects, with what’s in the kitchen that you can fight with to take someone down," she said. "That was a different sort of fun.”