CRAVE CORNER: We relive the late Chadwick Boseman's Hollywood 'entrance,' and his thoughts on playing Jackie Robinson in 42
As part of Original-Cin’s promotional partnership with Crave TV, we are highlighting an aspect of the service’s programming monthly. This month - on the occasion of Black History Month – Bonnie Laufer revisits her interview with the late Chadwick Boseman in his breakthrough Jackie Robinson biopic 42.
An actor’s life is all about entrances and exits. Chadwick Boseman, who was taken from us by cancer at age 43, may yet get an exit for the ages.
Already nominated for a Golden Globe for his final role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, an Academy Award nomination seems a solid bet, as does the chance of Boseman becoming a posthumous Best Actor Oscar winner.
His entrance was auspicious as well, his Hollywood breakthrough coming in the 2013 movie, 42. In it, he played baseball’s colour-barrier-breaker Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 became the first Black player in the majors.
Boseman went on to give us such memorable roles as James Brown in Get On Up, and Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice, in Marshall. And then it was on to billion-dollar box office, when he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as T’Challa, a.k.a Black Panther.
The late Chadwick Boseman got his big break playing Jackie Robinson in 42.
On August 28th of last year, Boseman died in his home with his wife by his bedside. He had been battling cancer for four years and only a few close friends and relatives knew that he was ill.
He had a short but amazingly impactful life.
February is Black History Month, and to commemorate it, Crave is highlighting Black creators, talent, and cultural figures through its Black Movies Matter Collection. The series of influential films includes 42 on Feb. 12.
Here, Original-Cin’s Bonnie Laufer takes us back to 2013 when she first sat down with the late, great then-newcomer Chadwick Boseman to discuss his role in 42 and what it meant for him to play Jackie Robinson.
Click for video links to Bonnie’s interviews with Boseman, Harrison Ford and writer/director Brian Helgeland for 42.
ORIGINAL-CIN: What an extraordinary performance. Why do you think that writer/director Brian Helgeland chose you to play Jackie Robinson?
CHADWICK BOSEMAN: I don't honestly know, but I heard him saying in an interview that he thought I was courageous. I thought it was because I was the most handsome! (Laughs)
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O-C: Well, that goes without saying Chadwick. But seriously, you're taking on such a legendary role. What kind of pressure is that on you?
BOSEMAN: It's a tremendous amount of pressure, but at the same time it was fun. I didn't think about it from that point of view. I try to find a way of taking myself away from that way of thinking and I felt pressure mostly from the family to be honest. Not that they said you better get this right or were in any way overbearing but I just wanted to do well by them.
When I met Rachel Robinson (Jackie’s wife) for the first time I was so impressed by her. She’s a regal woman, and she was like a grandmother in that first meeting. And I also felt that from her at certain moments along the way of making the film. So, I just wanted to do well by her. That's it.
O-C: Just to have her presence and her blessing on this movie must have been inspiration enough.
BOSEMAN: Oh definitely. She came to the set, she was involved and she read many drafts of the script. She let us know what we were getting right and we weren’t getting right.
Nobody can say that we didn’t get this right about Jackie, because I felt like if she signed off on it then, it must be legit.
There were even moments where we show a very vulnerable side of Jackie, when he broke down or showed weakness and she never told us to take that out.
She wanted to make sure that we presented all sides of him, he was human and she insisted we not take that out. To me, it’s the crux of the whole story, he wasn’t a machine. He had feelings and doubts, and that is a huge component of telling his story.
Harrison Ford playing the Dodgers’ Branch Rickey, opposite Boseman’s Robinson.
O-C: There’s no question about that, and it had to have weighed heavily on you. There’s a very memorable and uncomfortable scene when actor Alan Tudyk plays Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman, who taunts Robinson with relentless vile and humiliating racial slurs. How as a human being, not as an actor, do you even get past something like that?
BOSEMAN: Well, you want that to happen as an actor. As a person, you have to have your space. That's what you do. You have your space before you shoot a scene like that and then you have your space after you shoot the scene.
You tell people to leave you alone, don't come over here right now because it could be dangerous for you and it can be dangerous for me. So you have to have a set where you're given that protection and I think they provided that so that we could get the most real experience on the screen.
O-C: Were you at all shocked reading the script - in particular by the racial injustices that Jackie had to deal with?
BOSEMAN: I wasn't surprised by it at all. I felt in some ways the film gives you the right amount of it, and I’m sure he experienced things that were even worse than what we show.
I felt like the film gave you the right amount of it so that you can enjoy the other parts. One of the things that Rachel Robinson said to me was, you not only helped me remember the darker moments of that time, but the joy that we found with each other.
Sometimes that's the irony of life, that during the most difficult moments you look back on it and you realize how much there was to enjoy, how much you can celebrate and I think you needed to have both of those things in this film.
O-C: I can’t leave without asking you about your co-star Harrison Ford who plays Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ executive who expedited the integration of Major League Baseball. What was it like to work opposite that man?
BOSEMAN: It was like getting ready for the big game. That's what it is. You circle those scenes on the schedule and say, this is the big game. This is like the Celtics, this is Bulls Detroit. This is the Red Sox and Yankees. This is the big leagues! So I just looked at it as this is why you play the game.
O-C: What do you learn from a man like him? He’s been around awhile and has some pretty iconic roles under his belt.
BOSEMAN: You learn from his experience. There are certain things that you can ask him that you wouldn’t learn when you go to acting school.
You don't learn those things in a classroom, and you're not going to learn on other sets because he's played the lead before, he's a leading man.
So in this case, I'm playing the lead. It would be foolish not to ask him certain things about how to do that. So I asked him small things at some moments, and then other moments I just watched him on set.
I watched his rapport with the crew, I watched the way that he understood how things moved around him, little tricks of the trade. You just pick those up and I was grateful to have had that opportunity.
BRIAN HELGELAND ( WRITER/DIRECTOR) ON CHADWICK BOSEMAN
Chadwick came in, he was the second person who auditioned for the part. There's a very difficult scene in the middle of the movie that he chose as the very first thing to do coming in the room, and he was very specific.
It was a very dramatic scene and a lot of actors would play it down the middle so they could stay in the running for the part. Chadwick chose a very specific way to go, which I think was the right way to go, and it’s how we did it in the film as well.
It was a brave choice because he easily could have knocked himself out of the running. I thought he's a brave actor and he's going to play a brave man. So it was a good start and a good indication of his willingness to get in there and do what he had to do.
I also do not like mimicry, and wasn't necessarily looking for a physical resemblance to Jackie. But it was a bonus because he really looks like him, especially at certain times at certain angles in the film.