Source: Adriana M. Barraza/WENN.com / WENN
Chadwick Boseman may be one of the late actors that receives an Oscar nomination in 2021. According to Variety, the Get On Up star may receive a nomination for his role in the upcoming Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which will air on Netflix.
The film, which is based on the 1984 August Wilson play, is the last film that Boseman starred in. A source told Variety that Boseman is likely to secure a supporting actor nomination. Boseman starred alongside Viola Davis, who will play Blues musician Ma Rainey. Boseman will be playing Levee, Rainey’s troubled trumpeteer who is eager to branch off and launch his own career but in the meantime wants to revamp Rainey’s sound.
Denzel Washington, who served as a producer for the film, praised Boseman’s performance while expressing shock about Boseman’s death.
“He did a brilliant job, and he’s gone,” Washington told The New York Times. “I still can’t believe it.”
Boseman’s performance received a rave review from the Times. They said Boseman brought “an electrifying physicality to Levee, whether he’s wrestling with a past full of trauma, seducing Ma’s girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige), or tearing into a pair of monologues that culminate in Levee raging at God. Shot through with movie-star charisma and practically assured of Oscar recognition, it is Boseman’s finest screen performance.”
Davis told the Times that Boseman’s team helped him reached his full potential while filming. Boseman was privately battling stage four colon cancer. He was diagnosed in 2016. Boseman died on August 28, 2020 at age 43.
“I’m looking back at how tired he always seemed,” she said. “I look at his beautiful, unbelievable team that was meditating over him and massaging him, and I now realize everything they were trying to infuse in him to keep him going and working at his optimal level. And he received it.”
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will be released on Netflix on December 18, 2020.
