Chadwick Boseman’s Widow Shares Unspoken Oscar Speech

Simone Ledward Boseman, the widow of the beloved actor Chadwick Boseman, granted a rare interview for The Hollywood Reporter’s in-depth oral history of the COVID Oscars ceremony that took place five years ago, as part of which she shared, for the first time, the remarks that she would have given had her husband not been upset in the best actor race — he was nominated for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — at the very end of the night.

“I had written a whole speech,” Ledward Boseman recalled. “I wonder if I have it in my Notes.” After searching for it on her computer, she found it: “Oh! It says: I will never stop thanking God for you. Thank you to the most high God. Thank you, Carolyn and Leroy Boseman [Chadwick’s parents], and your mothers, and your mothers’ mothers. What purity. What honesty. What pain. What a role. What work. What beautiful, intricate humanity. What courage, bravery, fearlessness, honesty, commitment, humanity, strength. A spirit that refused to surrender to despair. What an actor. What an artist. What a cast. What a team. What a vision. Glory be to the most high God. Long live the King.”

Earlier in the piece, Ledward Boseman spoke about her late husband’s years-long private battle with colon cancer, and how the outbreak of COVID impacted their lives at the time. “It’s so strange to talk about it in these words because obviously with COVID so many people lost loved ones,” she reflected. “But the timing of lockdown for what we were going through was honestly ideal. I am really grateful for that time.”

To the shock of the world, Boseman died on Aug. 28, 2020. That was several months before the release of Ma Rainey, but Ledward Boseman confirmed that he had, in fact, seen the film for which he would go on to receive so much acclaim, and was even aware of the likelihood of awards recognition.

“We did get a chance to see it because he was going to have to do press. What I remember most, more than the watching of the film, were the conversations around knowing that they were going to be pushing toward award season and reconciling with what he was going to be able to participate in and what he wasn’t going to be able to do because of where he was. Those were hard conversations to have. I think that’s when members of his team started to recognize, ‘OK, something’s wrong.’”

After Boseman’s death, he went on to be nominated for every major pre-Oscars award, and after his name was called at the virtual Golden Globe, Critics Choice and SAG awards ceremonies, Ledward Boseman appeared onscreen and delivered powerful acceptance speeches on his behalf. “It was very cathartic to be able to talk about him, but it was challenging to figure out what I was going to say because I couldn’t say what he was going to say,” she acknowledged. “I wanted people to be able to hear from him in whatever way they could, so I started leafing through his notebooks to find: ‘What could I give that still felt it held his spirit?’ It was an honor to be able to do that for him.”

On March 15, 2021, Boseman was nominated for the best actor Oscar. (He was just the fifth person to receive a posthumous nomination in that category, following James Dean, Spencer Tracy, Peter Finch and Massimo Troisi.) During the nominations announcement, the Academy confirmed that the 93rd Oscars ceremony would take place fully in-person — unlike any of the earlier awards ceremonies — at downtown Los Angeles’ historic Union Station or one of 13 “hubs” in major cities around the world, with no option to prerecord a speech or Zoom in from home.

Ledward Boseman decided to attend the ceremony and prepared the aforementioned speech in case her husband’s name was called. “I felt a lot of pressure to get it right in that moment,” she said five years later. “I went with his best friend, Logan Coles, and his publicist, Nicki Fioravante, and so it’s not like I was alone. But just to not have him there? I wish I had the words to say how alone it really did feel.”

Given that Boseman’s performance had been recognized with every major precursor award except the BAFTA Award, which was won by Anthony Hopkins for The Father, the producers of the Oscars telecast made a fateful decision: to save the presentation of the best actor award for last. When Joaquin Phoenix opened the envelope and read the name on the card inside, it was not Boseman, but Hopkins, evoking gasps in the room. (Hopkins, at 83, became the oldest winner of an acting Oscar ever. He was asleep at his home in Wales, having decided not to risk his health by traveling to one of the hubs in Europe, and having been notified that he could not pretape an acceptance speech or join the telecast via Zoom.)

“And then it was over,” Ledward Boseman recalled. “It was awkward. It was maybe more than a little bit uncomfortable. But to be nominated for best actor is still an incredible accomplishment and is still recognition of his work. I don’t think that it was the intention of the producers for it to be uncomfortable … Looking back, it would have been better if best picture was last. It would’ve been a nice reset before the end of the night to have another celebratory moment, for someone that was hopefully able to walk up onstage and accept the award and give a speech and all of that.”

Ledward Boseman, who was never shown on camera during the telecast, took the news in stride. “Denzel [Washington, who produced Ma Rainey] gave as his cast gift a dog tag with a cross on it that’s engraved and says, ‘Man gives the award, God gives the reward.’ And I think that that summed it up really perfectly.”

The next morning, Hopkins posted a video to Instagram: “Good morning. Here I am in my homeland in Wales, and at 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award. I really didn’t. And I’m very grateful to the Academy, and thank you. And I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who was taken from us far too early. And again, thank you all very much. I really did not expect this, so I feel very privileged and honored. Thank you.”

Says Ledward Boseman, “It was very beautiful and very wonderful and very kind and thoughtful of him to include Chad in his acceptance speech. It’s not something that he had to do.”