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Hosted by Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham
Produced by Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Christina Djossa
Edited by Sasha Weiss
Engineered by Marion Lozano
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” came into theaters with a huge responsibility: It had to address the death of Chadwick Boseman, the star of the first “Black Panther” movie, who died of cancer in August 2020.
Wesley Morris and J Wortham discuss how the film offers the audience an experience of collective grief and mourning — something that never happened in the United States in response to the losses of 2020. They interrogate what it means that this gesture of healing came from Marvel and Disney, a corporate empire that is in control of huge swaths of our entertainment, and not from another type of leadership.
Additional resources:
To hear what Wesley and J had to say about the first “Black Panther” movie, listen to this episode of “Still Processing” from 2018.
Ryan Coogler, the director of “Wakanda Forever,” spoke to the author Ta-Nehisi Coates about the making of movie, and how it captured the real-life grief that people experienced after Chadwick Boseman’s death. Listen to their conversation here.
Hosted by: Wesley Morris and J Wortham
Produced by: Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Christina Djossa
Edited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha Weiss
Engineered by: Marion Lozano
Executive Producer, Shows: Wendy Dorr
Special thanks: Paula Szuchman, Sam Dolnick, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, Eslah Attar, Julia Moburg and Amanda Boe.