Why Chadwick Boseman almost turned down the role of James Brown: “Gimme something else”
It has already been more than five years since Chadwick Boseman sadly passed away at the age of just 43, and this week he was posthumously honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to mark his contribution to acting, which, despite his young age, had already spanned two decades.
The saddest part is that Boseman was evidently right in his peak when he fell ill; he was globally acclaimed as Marvel’s Black Panther and had picked up a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance in the 2018 blockbuster that grossed over a billion dollars and was nominated for seven Oscars.
And his final role, in 2020’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the Denzel Washington-produced drama that was released just months after his death, would earn him a raft of honours, including a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor’. Tragically, he didn’t live to receive those awards, and in many ways, his real success simply came too late for him, after starting out in acting in the early 2000s.
Although he had appeared in theatre and done some television work on the likes of Law and Order while living in Brooklyn, it wasn’t until he made the move to Los Angeles in 2008 that Boseman began to see some genuine progress in his career. That year saw him land his first feature film, and after more TV, he made his breakthrough in the Jackie Robinson baseball biopic 42 in 2013.
Thanks to his work on that movie, he was sent several other screenplays to consider the following year, one of which was another biopic, this time about the ‘Godfather of Soul’, James Brown, called Get On Up. Because he had just played Robinson, Boseman at first had no interest in the part, recalling to the Guardian that he didn’t even bother reading it when it arrived.
He said, “I just didn’t think there was any point in trying. I was like, ‘What’s next? Gimme something else.’ He’s too big an icon, and I’d just played one (in 42). And in my mind, I didn’t know how you would even approach those dance moves.”
Luckily, Boseman decided that he would do it, and a process began that would see him invited into the Brown family inner circle, in addition to learning all the legend’s dance moves and stage presence over only six weeks. Boseman immersed himself in the role and would stay in character during breaks in filming, explaining: “If we took a break and you sat beside me to eat, you’d be eating with James Brown. Till I went home at night, it was JB.”
Aside from taking on Brown’s look in every era of the R&B star’s career from the 1960s onward, Boseman also had to retrain his vocal cords to match the singer’s accent, go through rigorous physical training and do all his own dancing in the movie, which was produced by Mick Jagger and co-starred Ghostbusters icon Dan Aykroyd.
In the end, the film got excellent reviews, and Boseman’s performance was singled out for particular praise, although it made a small loss at the box office. It sparked a successful run for the actor that was cemented with his casting by Marvel in 2016 and his first appearance as Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War.
He also appeared in two further Marvel movies and a thriller called 21 Streets before he passed away.
