Lupita Nyong'o Recalls the Heartbreaking Way She Learned of Chadwick Boseman's Death From Viola Davis

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Chadwick Boseman died of colon cancer in late 2020, the future of his superhero franchise, , was uncertain. How does a story continue without its centerpiece?

How does a cast carry on under the burden of grief after losing their leading star?In a new interview with , Lupita Nyong’o reflects on how Boseman's unexpected death rocked her and the  cast, both personally and professionally.Previously, Boseman's producing partner, Logan Coles, his longtime agent, Michael Greene, and his trainer, Addison Henderson, shared that the actor chose to keep his cancer diagnosis a secret partly due to his mother, Carolyn's, influence. "[She] always taught him not to have people fuss over him," Greene said. «He also felt in this business that people trip out about things, and he was a very, very private person.»Henderson added that Boseman was passionate about «using his time and his moment to really affect people.»«Some people wait a lifetime to get the opportunity that he had, and Chad had so much wisdom, so much knowledge, so much inside of him that he wasn’t going to let this disease stop him from telling these amazing stories and showing his art in the prime of his life,» Henderson said.Nyong'o reveals to that while she had known Boseman was sick, she didn't know that he was terminally ill.

So when she learned of his death in a text from Viola Davis, she was suitably shaken. «I couldn't believe it. I was paralyzed,» she says, adding that for many of the Black Panther cast and crew, Boseman had been much more than a colleague; he had been a kind of spiritual anchor. «He had an aura,» Nyong'o says. «He was the leader, and we were all good with it.»«He affected how I move in the world,» she adds. «But that's the thing about Chadwick..