Chadwick Boseman is now officially a Disney Legend.
At the Disney Legends Award Ceremony held on Friday at the D23 Expo, the “Black Panther” actor was honored alongside actors Josh Gad, Kristen Bell, Anthony Anderson, and Kristen Bell. Derrick Boseman, the late Boseman’s brother, accepted the honor on his sibling’s behalf.
Chadwick The Disney Legend
“When I heard that Disney wanted to honor Chad, the first word that came to mind for me was the word honor,” Boseman said. “As I think about my brother and this honor that is being bestowed upon him, I wish that he was here to receive it. Him not being here has been a point of immense pain for my whole family. But as I think about him, I think about how he honored our parents. How he honored his family. How he honored even his friends, and he made sure that his friends had good careers. How he honored all the contracts that he signed. He honored them with his blood, his sweat, his tears, as he played these roles and he was taking chemo at the same time.”
The Disney Company has a 35-year tradition of honoring someone who has made a particularly significant contribution to the Disney legacy with the Disney Legends Award. Boseman received posthumous Disney legend recognition for his acclaimed performance as King T’Challa in the 2018 Marvel film “Black Panther,”.
He died in 2020 after a personal fight with cancer. The movie received a lot of praise, garnered a best picture nomination for the Academy Awards, and made over $1.3 billion worldwide, in large part because of Boseman’s well-known performance.
“Chad was an amazing person,” his brother continued. “Plato is credited with coining the phrase that ‘art imitates life.’ But Oscar Wilde came behind him and said, ‘Life imitates art.’ And in Chad’s case, it seems that life is imitating art. If we pay attention in this thing called storytelling, a story is being told to us all… Thank you for honoring my brother. I want to say say: Chad, we’ll always love you. And mom and dad will always love you. To me, mom and daddy are also legends. Because it takes a king and a queen to create a king.”
Additionally honored for their roles in the popular ABC comedy “Black-ish” were Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross.
