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Colman Domingo recalled sharing an emotional moment with Chadwick Boseman on the set of their 2020 movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Boseman died from colon cancer at 43 in August 2020, before the movie was released
Domingo has identified Boseman as a major supporter of his career in the late 2010s, as Domingo began to find more success in Hollywood
Colman Domingo is recalling an emotional moment he and the late Chadwick Boseman shared while filming the 2020 movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the last film the actor appeared in before his death at 43.
Domingo, 56, looked back on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the time he spent working with Boseman during a moderated conversation with Variety at San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival last month, where Domingo received Variety’s Creative Conscience Award. During the conversation, Domingo described Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom as a major turning point in his career and said he will “never forget” one moment he experienced with Boseman as they filmed a scene in which Boseman’s character questions God’s existence.
“It’s a moment that I feel like will stay with all of us. I started asking him the question over and over again. And then he exploded with this rage about God,” Domingo recalled. “We went into this fight scene, and then [director George C. Wolfe] called cut, and then we just grabbed each other and burst into tears. I didn’t know he was ill, and we didn’t know what was going on, but we cried and held each other.”
In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which follows a blues group’s fraught recording sessions in the 1920s, Boseman portrayed a trumpeter named Levee Green opposite Viola Davis’ blues singer Ma Rainey. Domingo played another member of their band in the film. Domingo, like most of Boseman’s associates and friends in Hollywood, was not aware that his costar was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016; he largely kept the diagnosis a secret until his death in August 2020.
Glynn Turman, Chadwick Boseman, Michael Potts and Colman Domingo in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Credit: David Lee/Netflix
Boseman received a posthumous Academy Award nomination for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Anthony Hopkins won the award at the 2021 Oscars for The Father. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom did win Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling; Davis, 60, received a Best Actress nomination as well.
“I think we created something so beautiful together, and I know that there were some other dynamics of his illness that it was meaningful to be there with him as he was taking this journey,” Domingo told Variety of working with Boseman. “Sometimes you don’t know why you’re being sent somewhere, being used, but hopefully you feel like you’re being used as a vessel to be there not only to create art, but also to be a human to somebody.”
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Chadwick oseman, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts and Colman Domingo in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Credit: David Lee/Netflix
Domingo previously identified Boseman as a mentor among his contemporaries in a May interview with The Hollywood Reporter. In that article, he also recalled that Boseman told others to keep their eye on Domingo’s career when the two men first met in 2018.
“I really feel like [Boseman]’s been lifting people like me and Michael B. Jordan up from the other side,” he said in that piece. “I do believe I have a little, beautiful angel in my friend Chadwick.”
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