Chadwick Boseman’s wife, Simone Ledward Boseman, is sharing the speech she would have given in his honor if her late spouse would have won at the 2021 Academy Awards months after his heartbreaking death.
“I had written a whole speech,” Ledward Boseman, 35, told The Hollywood Reporter in an oral history of the Oscars published Friday, March 13. “I wonder if I have it in my Notes [app].”
While speaking with the outlet, Ledward Boseman found a draft of her planned remarks in her phone.
“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,’” Ledward Boseman read aloud. “‘What purity. What honesty. What pain. What a role. What work. What beautiful, intricate humanity. What courage, bravery, fearlessness, honesty, commitment, humanity, strength.’”
She concluded, “‘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.’”
Chadwick, who died in 2020 at age 43 after a private battle with colon cancer, was nominated for Actor in a Leading Role at the 2021 Oscars for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He ultimately lost to The Father’s Anthony Hopkins.
“Well, good morning. Here I am in my homeland in Wales. At 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award,” Hopkins, who was not present for the awards show, said in an April 2021 video uploaded via Instagram the next day. “I really didn’t. I’m very grateful to the Academy, and thank you.”
Hopkins, now 88, further noted that he wanted to honor Chadwick, “who was taken from us far too early.”
Chadwick was favored to win the award after his Ma Rainey role earned him posthumous trophies at the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globe Awards that year.
“As an artist, an actor and a person, Chad made a practice of telling the truth. He is the most honest person I’ve ever met because he didn’t just stop at speaking the truth,” Ledward Boseman said in a Golden Globes speech in January 2021, accepting the honor on her late spouse’s behalf. “He actively searched for it — in himself, in those around him and in the moment. The truth can be a very easy thing for the self to avoid, but if one does not live in truth, then it’s impossible to live in line with a divine purpose for your life. And so, it became how he lived his life, day in, day out, imperfect but determined.”
Ledward Boseman has continued honoring the Black Panther star’s legacy in the years since his death, attending his posthumous Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in November 2025.
The 2026 Oscars air live on ABC Sunday, March 15, at 7 p.m. EDT.
