Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther co-star, Lupita Nyong’o, opened up to People about how the actor’s untimely death inspired her performance in A Quiet Place: Day One.
Boseman died in August 2020 at the age of 43 after being diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer in 2016. It was a battle he largely kept secret, even as the disease progressed to Stage 4 shortly before his death.
In A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel to the popular franchise, Nyong’o plays a young cancer patient living out her final days in a Harlem hospice whose quest for a final slice of pizza, unfortunately, coincides with an alien invasion.
"In the end, it was actually very therapeutic,” Nyong’o said of her role, “because I had just experienced not too many years ago the death of Chadwick Boseman, which shook me to my core. I definitely was thinking about that a lot," she admitted.
After Boseman’s death, Nyong’o “came to realize that it's really important to be reminded of our mortality, because then we live life just a little more intentionally. When we think we have all the time in the world, we can really take people for granted and experiences for granted."
Still, it wasn’t an easy role for Nyong’o to take on. She found it "scary to have to go" to a place where her character "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" after Boseman’s passing, she noted.
"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," Nyong’o added. "When we think we have all the time in the world, we can really take people for granted and experiences for granted."
A Quiet Place: Day One is currently in cinemas.
