Black Panther (Movie)

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    Anthony Parnther Conducts ‘Black Panther’ in New York

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    Anthony Parnther has a flourishing career as a classical conductor who also works in the fast-paced world of commercial entertainment.Anthony Parnther has a job that routinely takes him to fantastic places. Parnther, 42, makes his New York Philharmonic conducting debut this week. His destination? Wakanda: With a wave of his hand, he’ll evoke lush jungles and shimmering citadels as the film “Black Panther” screens overhead.Back home in Los Angeles in January, Parnther will pass through idealistic college classrooms and anxious laboratories, headed to a date with destiny in Los Alamos, when he conducts the sweeping score to “Oppenheimer.”But in a recent video interview, Parnther was finding his way to someplace quite different: Whoville.“I’ll be very honest with you,” he said in a video interview. “I’m sitting here trying to rapidly memorize the words to ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.’”He was cramming for a Christmas concert with the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, where he has served as music director since 2019.“I could tell you that I’m sitting here studying the Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto, which we’re doing on this concert,” he said. “But I’m actually more worried about the Grinch, because I’m the soloist.”Posts at San Bernardino and the Southeast Symphony Orchestra — a Los Angeles ensemble that is one of the nation’s oldest primarily Black orchestras — allow Parnther to explore and expand the repertoire. An enthusiastic communicator, he talks his audiences through his programs regularly, so singing isn’t that big of a stretch.Parnther conducting the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra in its 2022 Carnegie Hall Debut.J. Adam Fenster/University of RochesterBut his “Black Panther” and “Oppenheimer” engagements shed light on a less visible aspect of his growing career, which has included appearances with major ensembles, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Even if you don’t know Parnther by name, you’ve likely heard his conducting — on film soundtracks like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Turning Red”; television series like “Fargo” and “Only Murders in the Building”; or video games, including “League of Legends” and “Guild Wars.” If you’ve streamed “Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl,” a concert performance of the animated Disney film featuring the original voice cast, you’ve seen him in action.Ludwig Göransson, who composed the scores for “Black Panther” and “Oppenheimer,” views Parnther as an invaluable collaborator. In a video interview from Los Angeles, he said: “If something doesn’t sound right, I’ll hit him up on the podium and we’ll talk about things — how to adjust a couple of notes or change a voicing — and he can immediately relate that information to the musicians.”One reason he works so effectively with studio musicians, Göransson says, is because he emerged from their ranks. For Parnther, working with Göransson on the “Star Wars” TV spinoffs “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett” was especially meaningful. As an eighth grader in Norfolk, Virginia, he learned his middle-school band would play music from “Star Wars” on a coveted trip to the theme park Kings Dominion. Thumbing through a musical reference book, he flipped past “A” and the accordion — it brought up unfortunate associations with “The Lawrence Welk Show” — before landing on “B” and the bassoon. He took up the instrument as his way to tag along.Parnther, the son of Jamaican and Samoan academics, was exposed to gospel in the Baptist church, but it was soundtracks by John Williams that sparked his interest in music. The timing wasn’t ideal: In high school, when he decided to pursue music professionally, his family was living in public housing after losing their home in a fire; his mother was fighting cancer.She bought her son the best bassoon she could afford, a Schreiber S91 Prestige: not state of the art, but a durable instrument.“She had to literally make the choice between paying the electric bill and making the payments on my instrument,” Parnther said. “She decided to make the payments on my instrument, so there was a fire lit in me: I wanted to repay my mother for the sacrifices that she made.”Parnther went on to earn music degrees from Northwestern and Yale. He then took a position at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tenn., gaining confidence as a conductor while earning a music education degree.His tenacity and ambition paid off. The kid who had been inspired by “Star Wars” to pick up the bassoon would go on to play his hardy Schreiber for Williams in the soundtracks for the last three feature films in the series. He also played bassoon on sessions with high-profile pop artists, including Beyoncé, Rihanna and Snoop Dogg. (When his instrument was stolen from his car in 2020, its theft and recovery made headlines.)“The conductor of the future, in order for the orchestra to remain relevant,” Parnther says, “will have to find a way to center the orchestra and not the genre.”Philip Cheung for The New York TimesHis work as a versatile, open-minded conductor brought him attention beyond the studios. In addition to his San Bernardino and Southeast Symphony posts, in 2020 Parnther was named conductor of the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, an elite annual aggregation of classical musicians of African descent, whose Chicago debut he will lead in April.Conducting also brought unanticipated collaborations — with the singer John Legend, the hip-hop producer Metro Boomin and the metal band Avenged Sevenfold, among others. Parnther hasn’t lured those artists into his concert-music realm yet, but it’s not out of the question.“The conductor of the future, in order for the orchestra to remain relevant, will have to find a way to center the orchestra and not the genre,” he said. “Sometimes that means you mix genres on the same concert, if there’s a story line or a relevant through line.”And the skills he’s picked up in the fast-paced world of commercial entertainment have proved transferable. Engaged last year to record “The Central Park Five,” Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, with the Long Beach Opera in just two days, Parnther took the company into a Glendale film studio. He used a metronomic click track and other tools of the trade to maximize efficiency.“The click track lends a certain precision,” Davis said in a video interview, “but there are times when I want a little more flexibility to let the music breathe” — crucial in sections involving improvisation. “It was a great experience, having the tightness of the music, yet also allowing space for the creative expression of individual musicians.”Parnther has used his platforms and rising profile to champion Black composers like Davis and Adolphus Hailstork, while nurturing artists who straddle worlds as he does, including Kris Bowers, Chanda Dancy and Tamar-kali. But his Hollywood affiliations have their own perks.“I’m not a famous conductor,” Parnther said, “but I have been picked out in so many public spaces as the conductor from ‘Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl.’” He’s seen a video of his symphonic concert with Metro Boomin rack up over six million views on YouTube. “And a comment that I ran across is like, Oh my God, this is awesome — but wait a minute, is that the same conductor from ‘Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl’?” More

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      ‘Black Panther’ and the New Blueprint for Female Warriors Onscreen

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      Danai Gurira: For Dominique to be out there now is thrilling. We’re both children of immigrants and, though our journeys are different [Thorne’s family is from Trinidad; Gurira’s is from Zimbabwe], we have that similarity when your parents come from another place and you’re used to a dual cultural existence. There’s something courageous in her; she’s not going to walk into a space unprepared. She’s wise for her years and grounded. There was a tender day on set [for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” filmed after Chadwick Boseman, the franchise’s original star, died in 2020] when we connected deeply. You never expect grief; it just hits when it wants. We had to lean on each other, and Dominique understood what we were dealing with.When I was in grad school [for acting, at N.Y.U.], I was distraught about how terribly African women were portrayed in the West, if they ever were. Putting out stories that countered that — whether through acting in my first play [“In the Continuum,” 2005, co-written with Nikkole Salter] or watching others in my subsequent plays [including “Eclipsed” on Broadway in 2016] — felt like what I was meant to do. The joy for me is to see Black women from around the world getting our stories told: Letitia [Wright, another “Black Panther” actor] is Guyanese British, and she had to learn a ton of Shona when she was the lead in my play at the Young Vic [“The Convert,” 2018-19, in London]. To have her doing our accents and intonations beautifully was like seeing the diaspora embracing itself.culture banner More

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      Plastic Off the Sofa

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      Listen and follow ‘Still Processing’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWesley Morris and Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and “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.Tenoch Huerta Mejía as Namor in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Photo Illustration: The New York Times. Photo: Eli Adé/Marvel StudiosAdditional 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 WorthamProduced by: Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Christina DjossaEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrSpecial thanks: Paula Szuchman, Sam Dolnick, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, Eslah Attar and Julia Moburg. More

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      How ‘Black Panther’ Builds Complex Characters From the Politics of Colonization

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      In the original and in “Wakanda Forever,” heroes and villains are deeply layered, reflecting real-life issues facing people of color around the world.What ingredients make a hero or a villain? Despite so many film franchises’ attempts at bringing nuance to the dichotomy between good and evil, their formulas for these characters, particularly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, seem painfully reductive: Heroes make speeches about justice and fight to valiant, soaring theme music. Villains? God complexes and more stylish fashion.A notable exception is the “Black Panther” films, which imbue heroes and villains with a complexity that derives from the politics around colonization and the African diaspora. In these movies, the line between hero and villain isn’t simply one between good and evil; it’s a boundary defined by the relatable ways each side reacts to the real enemy: the white nations and institutions that benefit from the enslavement and disenfranchisement of people of color.“Black Panther” and particularly the new sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” exhibit a reverence for their heroes that’s rooted in familial and cultural legacy. T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the king of Wakanda with a superhero alter ego, is grounded in and supported by his lineage: not only do his mother and sister act as his moral foundation, but so do his father and the Black Panthers who have come before him. It’s noteworthy that the ceremony to become the next Black Panther involves being buried and speaking to ancestors for guidance.“Wakanda Forever” begins with the death of T’Challa (from disease, like Boseman, who died from cancer in 2020). The movie honors T’Challa with a gorgeously filmed and choreographed funeral sequence. And it’s clear this is not just about building emotional stakes in the film. “Wakanda Forever” is honoring Boseman himself, showing clips from the first film and allowing the other characters to fully address their grief so that his death doesn’t become just another plot twist or issue that the narrative needs to work around.Shuri (Letitia Wright) in the funeral procession that honors both T’Challa and Chadwick Boseman. Marvel In “Black Panther,” T’Challa’s typically even-keeled, empathetic personality is tempered by his occasionally less than resolute political stances. At first he follows his family’s policy of keeping Wakanda and its resources isolated from the outside world. Then his decision, at the end of the film, to reveal Wakanda’s existence sets off a chain of events that leads to the central conflict in the sequel. Boseman’s, and, thus, T’Challa’s, premature passing begs the question of how the Black Panther would have evolved as king: how would he have ruled Wakanda given his decision to abandon the nation’s isolationist attitude and open it up?The sequel wisely poses that weighty question to Shuri (Letitia Wright), whom the film also entrusts to carry our rage and grief over T’Challa’s death. In order to become the Black Panther, she has to overcome these feelings — symbolized by the appearance of Killmonger, the first film’s antagonist, in a vision brought on when she eats the Heart-Shaped Herb.Her grief is recognizable. In T’Challa’s absence, Wakanda begins to resemble so many Black communities in which the women are left to mourn and then take charge after the men die, the victims of poor health or violence. Of course Shuri feels wronged and spends the film being warned against her rage — “Wakanda Forever” is well aware of the enduring angry Black woman stereotype and surmounts it by having Shuri harness and work through her anger, ultimately evolving to become the hero in the end.On the flip side, the villains of the “Black Panther” films aren’t clear-cut enemies but victims of structural racism: Killmonger in the original and Namor in the sequel are righteously angry men of color who are responding to the ways their communities have been damaged by several great -isms (including capitalism, colonialism and, again, racism). Killmonger, who grew up in Oakland without a father and with all the disadvantages that come with being a Black man in America, wants to use Wakandan technology to empower Black people all over the world. His plan is violent, but it’s not far from the Black Power movement’s extreme factions in the 1960s. (That’s when a group of Black Panthers with guns protested at the California Statehouse, proclaiming, “The time has come for Black people to arm themselves.”)Tenoch Huerta Mejía as Namor, king of the hidden underwater civilization Talokan. MarvelNamor, the king of Talokan, a hidden Atlantis-style underwater civilization of Indigenous peoples, is a direct victim of colonization who has witnessed the enslavement of his people. He fears that Talokan might be discovered now that America and its allies are searching for vibranium. Will his people be at risk of exploitation and violence from white nations as a consequence of T’Challa’s decision to reveal Wakanda and its resources?On one level the conflicts in these movies are insular: communities of color are set against one another, which is so much more real than an evil robot or a big purple dude snapping half the universe away. But in “Wakanda Forever,” although the big battle is between Wakanda and Talokan, the actual villains are the countries searching for vibranium in their bids for power. In an early scene at the United Nations, Queen Ramonda confronts diplomats demanding access to vibranium; their countries have sent undercover agents to raid Wakanda’s vibranium facilities, and have searched the ocean for other possible stores of vibranium, aiming to use the precious metal to further develop their weaponry.In “Black Panther,” the film tosses us a red herring in the form of Ulysses Klaue, one of Black Panther’s main nemeses and the son of an actual Nazi in the original comics. Klaue is perfectly set up as the bad guy: he’s a criminal mastermind, a shady profiteer who sells weapons and artifacts, many from Wakanda. A more predictable film would have maintained him as the big bad guy and brought Killmonger in as a villainous sidekick — a Black man misled by anger, but still likely to redeem himself by the end. With his murder of Klaue, Killmonger may have supplanted him as the antagonist, but the reality is that the fountainhead for Killmonger’s fury and militant politics are society’s racial inequities, exploited by Klaue, Europeans and others who see Black people primarily as a means to building wealth, tracing all the way back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.When Shuri is forced to confront Killmonger, which means confronting the part of her that’s angry and hurt and hardened by grief, the film implies that this is a common duality Black people embody today, that we must simultaneously hold our personal sense of dignity and righteousness, like a Wakandan royal, and our outrage and shame, like Killmonger. Does that make any one of us less than a hero? No, these films say, because in the end there’s still a Black Panther protecting the nation.In these films, the true villain is a history of white oppression and power, but the enemy — whether another person of color or a Black person elsewhere in the diaspora — is on the same team. More

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      ‘The Woman King’ and Intimate Moments Amid Epic Action

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      From her debut feature, the rom-com classic “Love and Basketball,” to her most recent action hit, “The Old Guard,” Gina Prince-Bythewood is known for films with rich character introspection amid outward chaos. That touch is evident again this fall even as she widens her cinematic playing field with the fact-based battle epic “The Woman King.”The period film follows a troop of fierce woman warriors, the Agojie, as they defend the West African kingdom of Dahomey from slave traders, domestic and foreign. Led by Viola Davis as General Nanisca, the women live in their own corner of the palace of King Ghezo (John Boyega) in a man-free enclave as they hone their combat skills. Into this environment, Nawi (newcomer Thuso Mbedu), a young girl unceremoniously dumped at the palace, begins training alongside more experienced soldiers played by Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim.Davis brought the concept to Prince-Bythewood. “When we first met with her, she wept in the room,” Davis said of Prince-Bythewood. “When a director has that level of passion and vulnerability for the work, they’re going to treat it as their child. I understood that this was Gina’s magnum opus in the room.”In a video interview, Prince-Bythewood explained how she went about tackling what would be, logistically, her biggest film yet. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Tell me about how the scale of this movie was different from things you’ve done before.When I met with Viola and Cathy [Schulman, a producer] to get the job, I said to them, I felt all my work until this point led me to be able to tell this story the right way and give it the epic scale it deserved, to do the action the right way, to showcase these women in the way they deserve to be showcased, given all the things I’ve learned, not only on “The Old Guard” with action but just in storytelling. Do you care about the characters? Do they feel real to you? That’s where every really good movie starts.Viola Davis as a general leading the Agojie into battle. The actress brought the material to the director, who wept when they first met to discuss it.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesHow did this production come to you?About five years ago, I read that Viola Davis was going to do a film about female warriors, and I said to myself, “Why didn’t they come to me for that?” [Laughs] But then they did; they had come to me as a writer-director, but the script had to be written. I think I was on “Silver & Black” [a superhero project that was ultimately canceled], so I couldn’t take on the writing, but I said, “Please come back to me when you have a script.” You say that a lot, but I really did mean it.And then they came back to me with the script [credited to Dana Stevens from a story by Stevens and Maria Bello]. At that point, “Black Panther” had come out, and I remember reading that the Dora Milaje in “Black Panther” were based on real-life warrior women. People were calling them Black Amazons, and they actually had a real name, which was Agojie — that’s when I first heard about them. As soon as I read the script, I knew in five pages that I had to do this movie. It was just excitement, excitement, excitement, because the story was entrenched in truth and a specific war that happened at a specific time, then led to a bigger war against colonizers. The more I learned about them, the more I got excited about putting this incredible culture — and us — onscreen in a way that we haven’t been able to see ourselves.I’m glad you mentioned the Dora Milaje before I did, because you’re definitely going to hear comparisons to them. How do you take that?I loved “Black Panther.” Loved it. You know, for me, “The Woman King” is where we started, and “Black Panther” is where we can go, so past and future — I think it’s a beautiful connection. I think it’s cool that people can now learn that this doesn’t have to be a fantasy, that we really were these women, we have this innate warrior within us.Based on “The Secret Life of Bees” and “Love and Basketball,” you like introspective character moments, especially with women. How did you achieve such moments within the scale and spectacle of “The Woman King”?I feel like the intimate moments were as important as the big set pieces. Set pieces and action do not matter if you don’t care about the characters. So I love to take the time to allow an audience to understand who people are, where they come from, their relationships with others. The sisterhood of this film was so important, the humanity of these women was so important: I wanted to take the time to establish that so when you see Viola fighting in the Oyo battle, you care. You’ve got to invest that time. I love doing action, but I love doing two people in a scene. [Lynch’s character] Izogie braiding [Nawi’s] hair and talking to her about, “You’re more powerful than you even know” — I get off doing that scene equally as I do doing a big battle scene.Do you find that action surrounding such internal scenes can threaten to overpower them?Great action magnifies who a character is. You can tell so much story within an action scene. But you’ve got to know who Izogie is from the outset and the way she fights. That was fun to create: What is your fighting style, and what does that say about your character? To be able to do that with the actors, that’s all the fun stuff.From left, Thusu Mbedu, Davis and Sheila Atim, who told the director she wished her 12-year-old self could have seen this film.Sony PicturesWhere did you film, and what were some of the challenges of being on location?We shot in South Africa, the majority in Cape Town. We built our entire palace there. But the first two weeks of filming was in KwaZulu-Natal, where we shot a lot of the deep jungle stuff. That was incredible to be in that environment; that’s also where Thuso is from, so the fact that her first movie she got to shoot where she was born and raised was amazing for her.When we got back to Cape Town, Omicron hit us, and that was really tough because we had to shut down for a couple weeks. Scariest thing, we were three weeks into shooting. I didn’t know if we were going to come back. Was Omicron going to keep doing this, or was it going to plateau?Was your fear that you’d have to scrap the film altogether, or just delay it?I thought we were going to have to scrap it.Sticking with South Africa, let’s talk about Thuso. You said this was her first film. What did she bring to the film that you had to have?She auditioned. The moment her face appeared on Zoom, I just cared about her before she even opened her mouth! And then she opened her mouth, and I cared about her even more. She just has this thing, this innate vulnerability, but also she’s a generational talent. She’s so good.She can go toe-to-toe with Viola Davis! Like, who can do that? She did that. Thuso’s so smart about character, she pays attention to everything — detail is so important to her. She’s so passionate and so good. I loved just watching her in scenes.Let’s talk about the fight scenes. The actors did some of their own fighting and stunts in a battle-heavy movie.To each one of them, including Viola, I had to look [them] in the eye and [say], “You’re going to do your own fighting and stunts. Are you willing to do everything you have to to embody these characters?” And everyone said yes. But it’s one thing to say yes, it’s another to really do it, and I’m talking months of work. You have to have an incredible mind-set to do that. The beauty of it is that type of training is part of the rehearsal process. It helps you build character, it helps bond them. But they have such great pride now when they get to see what they did. I mean, that’s really them fighting.It amazes me that there’s this narrative that women aren’t warriors, aren’t tough. These women put themselves through so much to be able to do what they did on set, and in an action film, you should never get injured, but you will get hurt at some point — a stray punch or you land wrong — and all of these women got hurt and would not stop. I love it, because I’m an athlete, and to see that from them was really beautiful.Another thing I think that’s going to be immediately appreciated and a fact that kept coming into my head is: Little girls are going to see all these natural hairstyles, and that is huge.Sheila is the one that said she wishes her 12-year-old self had this film. And, yeah, that’s the thing we’re most excited about: How can this change the way that we see ourselves, especially little girls? Do you get to now grow up and see yourself heroically, and can you take that in for yourself? I’m really hoping that for this film. More

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      The Women of ‘Wakanda Forever,’ the ‘Black Panther’ Sequel

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      When Marvel released the trailer for the sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” in July, it garnered 172 million views in its first 24 hours. That was nearly double the viewership of the original “Black Panther” teaser in 2017. In the intervening years, much had changed. The first one, directed by Ryan Coogler, smashed not only box office records but also expectations and stereotypes about whether overseas audiences would watch films with predominantly Black casts. “Black Panther” also became the first superhero movie nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards.At the same time, T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, and his alter ego, Black Panther, both brilliantly inhabited by Chadwick Boseman, became fan favorites in the battle with Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). The singularity of Boseman’s measured, charismatic yet playful performance helped shape the legacy of “Black Panther,” making role and actor almost synonymous and inspiring millions of children worldwide to see themselves in a Black superhero.But even then, I thought the most obvious rival for T’Challa’s throne wasn’t Killmonger but the Dora Milaje, the women warriors who loyally protect their country’s leader. Okoye, played by the marvelous Danai Gurira, was the chief military strategist for the wealthiest nation on earth. In the teaser for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” we see the Dora Milaje, including Ayo (Florence Kasumba reprising her role) and Aneka (Michaela Coel, joining the cast), taking an even more prominent role and confronting a new enemy, Namor, the Sub-Mariner, played by Tenoch Huerta. Also making an appearance is his cousin, the mutant hybrid Namora, with Huerta’s fellow Mexican actor Mabel Cadena in this role.But, in addition to protecting Wakanda, the Dora Milaje also must secure the throne without T’Challa. After Boseman died in 2020 following a private battle with colon cancer, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, announced that the character would not be recast, raising speculation about the destiny of Shuri (Letitia Wright), who is T’Challa’s sister and heir apparent as well as Wakanda’s chief scientist. That seemed to be the thinking until the trailer arrived, and the hashtag #recastTChalla went viral, followed by a Change.org petition with more than 60,000 signatures contending, “If Marvel Studios removes T’Challa, it would be at the expense of the audiences (especially Black boys and men) who saw themselves in him.”From left, Dorothy Steel, Florence Kasumba, Angela Bassett and Gurira in a scene from the new film. Marvel StudiosWhat risks being lost in this debate are the powerful women of Wakanda — Okoye and Shuri, of course, but also Nakia, the spy played by Lupita Nyong’o, and Ramonda, the queen (the legendary Angela Bassett). In the trailer, you can see they are warriors, mourners, healers, mothers, leaders, sisters and defenders of the legacy of T’Challa (and, for that matter, Boseman). They might also expand the meaning of the Black Panther superhero imagery beyond one man or even one moment in time.In advance of the Nov. 11 release of the sequel, with the plot still under wraps, I spoke to several women of “Wakanda Forever,” including Bassett, Cadena, Gurira, Kasumba, Nyong’o and Wright. Though they experienced the making of the film quite differently from one another, they found ways to grieve together, overcome injuries (Wright suffered a critical shoulder fracture and a severe concussion) and forge a real-life sisterhood on-set that mirrors the feminist spirit of the fictional Wakanda.These are edited excerpts from our conversations.Were you surprised by how huge a hit “Black Panther” was in 2018?ANGELA BASSETT I was very pleasantly surprised by the outpouring of love for the story, for the actors, for the representation, for the entertainment of it all. Not being a comic book person myself coming into this project, I expected those who love the Marvel Universe to show up. But for the rest of humanity to show up in droves was mind-blowing.DANAI GURIRA We were able to create very full characters that killed a lot of stereotypes about what a superhero or heroism looks like. We all have stories, but one that jumped out at me was when this 11-year-old white boy would not let go of my hand. His dad was like, “I’m so sorry.” But, that whole experience shattered the larger idea that “Oh, the only way you can resonate is as a white male in these types of roles.”LETITIA WRIGHT It’s been really beautiful to see so many young people be inspired. I always feel really proud when someone says that Shuri has expanded how they think about themselves.Kasumba, right, is reprising her role as Ayo, but Dominique Thorne, left, and Mabel Cadena are new to the franchise. The training was exhausting, Cadena said, but “I was also inspired by these women every day.”Simone Niamani Thompson for The New York TimesGiven that past success, how did you prepare for this sequel, both in terms of its intense fandom and the loss of Chadwick Boseman?LUPITA NYONG’O Let me speak for myself. There was a lot of stillness, reflection, prayer and meditation to bolster me up as emotionally, mentally and spiritually as possible. It was a unique experience to step back into this world without our leader. When you have a sophomore film, there’s a lot of expectation. But I think the loss of Chadwick kind of took all that away. I found myself having to radically accept that this was going to be different, and that showing up with as much openness as possible was key.WRIGHT In addition to what Lupita said, which was perfect, the preparation process coming back into this was definitely a spiritual one. I remember connecting a lot with Danai. When we got to Atlanta [where filming took place], we went for a walk in the park and just sat with each other and processed what it meant to begin again and what it would take. The beautiful thing I found was that I wasn’t alone. Coming back to the world of Wakanda, I felt like I had family that understood.GURIRA There are ways that you as an artist can try to have some control over what you’re stepping into. And for me, a lot of that is the training we do as the Dora Milaje. But it was also clear that there was another journey that we had to take. I remember sitting with Ryan, and he helped me process what felt different this time: It was grief. So grief intermingled with our process. There were things I couldn’t prepare for, like stepping into the throne room and remembering the last time I was there and getting really hit by that. And then, as Letitia said, we leaned on each other.FLORENCE KASUMBA I had to learn that I’m still not ready to speak about everything with everyone. I didn’t know when I was going to be triggered. But if that happened, I knew there were people I could be open with; coming to work felt like coming home. Also, the training helped a lot because we had to be so focused. It was a combination of losing ourselves but also making sure that we move as one again after such a long time.Mabel, you’re the newest member of this cast. What was it like becoming part of this “Black Panther community”?MABEL CADENA It was incredible. I didn’t speak the same language at the beginning, and the fight training was really hard for me, too. There were points when I felt really tired, but I was also inspired by these women every day. I’d say, “If these girls can, I can do more one day.” And then I’d speak to Ryan, and he’d give me the opportunity to build out my character as a Mexican woman. So, I was able to confront my fears and, at the same time, felt entirely safe with and grateful for these women.How intense was the training for your battle scenes?KASUMBA You have to be physically and mentally so sharp. I started training for this role in May 2021 because mentally, you need to understand that your body has to function for about a year. And because we work with weapons and can hurt ourselves, we also had to be confident enough to do our strikes while also making sure we didn’t harm our colleagues. The training from the first movie helped us because there’s a lot of muscle memory.GURIRA The literal training is very dependent on the story we’re telling. In the first film, there was a specific enemy and a specific response. Now, we are telling another story, so there are very specific drills to unify us. And then there’s a lot of individual work. I had a couple of injuries over the course of this one, and I had to fight through them. But I love it because, ultimately, it grounds the world. You have to know how to move and live in sort of an instinct of warriorness that is specific to your character.Cadena, center, said the director Ryan Coogler gave her “the opportunity to build out my character as a Mexican woman,” she said.Marvel StudiosLetitia, you were severely injured on set, right?WRIGHT My experience was different. There were a lot of physical challenges that I faced as well, but alongside that I came away really proud that in the face of adversity, I could bounce back and give that extra life and strength to my character. I think Mabel said it beautifully. Seeing everybody give 110 percent inspires you each day. The journey wasn’t pain-free, but you can stand on top of the mountain and say you did it. Hopefully, that transfers to the film, and people walk away feeling ecstatic and empowered because that’s definitely how we feel after making it.That is such a powerful image. Do you think people are more receptive to Black women as superheroes?BASSETT I think that remains to be seen. “Wakanda Forever” is poised to be the next film to really garner excitement for lots of people. Over a billion dollars’ worth of people hopefully will go to the movies. And who will they see but our faces? Black women’s faces. I love seeing it. In this day and age, you don’t have to wait for a few folks in a few offices at the top of a few buildings to make it happen. You know? Our voices are so compelling that they must be told.GURIRA [The first] film allowed us, as women characters, to gain even more complexity. And it’s important that it’s not just a one-moment thing, but you see Black and women of color characters grow and have more dimension.WRIGHT Today a girl told me, “I came out of the cinema feeling I can do anything after watching the film and seeing what Shuri presented to the world.”GURIRA If putting these characters in a heroic space propels that sense of ownership of self and what one can do with their own potential as young women and girls of color, that’s everything, really.WRIGHT It should become the norm because there are so many women out there that are so heroic and amazing. We just show a piece of that onscreen.“Black Panther” gave us a utopia that we do not necessarily have in real life. What excited you the most about the sisterhood you had as actresses or the female solidarity that your characters had for each other in “Wakanda Forever”?CADENA [It’s been said that] when a woman raises her voice, we all bloom. These words are really inspiring to me, and I think this is the legacy of the first movie. Before this, I had only worked in Mexico City, so working with these women and Ryan completely changed my life and the way I thought about my career. Now, I have new dreams and new expectations about the way I want to make women characters.BASSETT It all played out beautifully that I’ve had a bit more experience in my career and that they are coming up and doing the same great work. There’s a lot of respect. But it’s not only about the work that we do; it’s also about how we work with one another. If we lock arms, then it’s a much stronger piece.NYONG’O The undervaluing of women because of their gender doesn’t exist in Wakanda. We saw that in the first film, which is why it resonated. This new film continues with the conceit that this is a world where those things don’t exist. But the question we’re tackling is not their womanhood. It’s their beliefs, passions, loves and arguments, and it creates a robust drama. Hopefully, the world as we know it watches and is empowered by it, despite itself.What I love about the Wakanda story is that it offers us a version of a world that we are striving to get to. More

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      Marvel Studios Unveils ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’

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      The studio announced news of the film’s release on Saturday at the pop-culture convention Comic-Con International in San Diego.Marvel Studios has unveiled a trailer for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — the long-awaited sequel to its hit film “Black Panther” — which it said would open in cinemas in the United States on Nov. 11.The teaser, screened on Saturday at the pop-culture convention Comic-Con International in San Diego, features several cast members from the first film, as well as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who played one of the protagonists, King T’Challa. Boseman, whose image appears on a mural in the teaser, died from colon cancer at age 43 in 2020.The film follows Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Shuri (Letitia Wright), M’Baku (Winston Duke), General Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the elite women warrior group Dora Milaje (including Ayo, played by Florence Kasumba) as they “fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death,” the studio said on Saturday in a news release.“As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda,” the studio added.The trailer — a visually dazzling glimpse of the future world of Wakanda — is set to a cover of the Bob Marley song “No Woman, No Cry.” Ludwig Goransson, the film’s composer, described it as “an aural first glimpse of Wakanda Forever.”The “sound world” for the film, he said in the statement, was created during trips to Mexico and Nigeria, where he and others worked with traditional musicians to learn about the “cultural, social and historical contexts of their music.”Then, they built a catalog of instrumental and vocal recordings together with those artists, and “began to build a musical vocabulary for the characters, story lines and cultures of Talocan and Wakanda,” Goransson said, adding that the idea was to create “an immersive and enveloping sound world for the film.”The film’s release was announced by the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, who also noted the upcoming release of several other films and shows, including “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” starring Tatiana Maslany; “Secret Invasion,” featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn; and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.”Speaking at the Comic-Con event on Saturday, Nyong’o said that it felt “monumental” to return to Wakanda. “The universe of Wakanda is expanding,” she said. “You guys have a lot to look forward to.”Gurira, who plays Okoye, the general of Wakanda’s elite female bodyguards and the head of armed forces and intelligence, said that when she was growing up in Zimbabwe she always looked up to the way America “made superheros onstage and on the big screen.”To the crowd, she added: “You’re taking in that culture, and you’re celebrating it. That, to me, is everything.” More

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      Dorothy Steel, Whose Big-Screen Career Had a Late Start, Dies at 95

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      She was cast in “Black Panther” at 90, not long after she began acting professionally. “As soon as we saw her,” the movie’s casting director said, “we wanted her.”Dorothy Steel was 90 and had been acting professionally for little more than a year when her agent asked her, in late 2016, if she wanted to audition for a role in “Black Panther,” the Marvel Studios film set in the fantastical African nation of Wakanda.She was uncertain. So she said no.“I said, ‘There is no way I’m going to be in no comic strip at my age,’” she recalled telling her agent, Cindy Butler, when she appeared on Steve Harvey’s television show in 2018. “But she’s very persistent. I have to give her credit. She said, ‘Miss Dorothy, you can do this.’”She relented after getting an extra push from her grandson, Niles Wardell.“She was on the fence about it,” Mr. Wardell said in a phone interview, “and when she brought it to my attention, I said: ‘Grandma, you always talk about stepping out on faith and doing the things you love. This is your opportunity.’”He added, “She wasn’t so much concerned that it was a comic-strip movie, but that the role was too big for her.”Before she auditioned, Ms. Steel studied videos of Nelson Mandela on YouTube to help her develop a credible accent. She then auditioned on video for the role of a tribe leader, reading lines from the script. Ms. Butler emailed the video to Sarah Finn, the film’s casting director, who quickly agreed to hire her.“We found her late in the process,” Ms. Finn said by phone. “She was extraordinary. As soon as we saw her, we wanted her. She had an incredible spirit, warmth, humor and intelligence. We were thrilled to cast her.”She was in a few scenes but said only one line, to T’Challa, the king of Wakanda and the movie’s title character, played by Chadwick Boseman: “Wakanda does not need a warrior right now. We need a king.”Ms. Steel died on Oct. 14 in a hospital in Detroit at 95. She had completed most of her filming for the “Black Panther” sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” when she got sick. She was flown home by Marvel to Detroit, where she had been living for the last year.Her grandson, her only immediate survivor, confirmed the death.Dorothy May Steel was born on Feb. 23, 1926, in Flint, Mich. She worked for many years as a senior revenue officer for the Internal Revenue Service in Detroit. Her marriage to Warren Wardell ended with his death.After retiring in 1984, she lived for 20 years in the Caribbean, on St. Croix, before moving to Atlanta to be near her grandson and her son, Scott, who died in 2018.Ms. Steel began acting in her 80s in the annual plays staged at the Frank Bailey Senior Center in Riverdale, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. She had never acted before “and wanted to try something new to see if she could do it,” said Elaine Jackson, the former manager of the center, who wrote the plays, including one in which Ms. Steel played a teenager.Ms. Butler said that while Ms. Steel was playing the voice of God in one of the plays, Greg Alan Williams, an actor and drama teacher, happened to be there and was impressed enough to offer her free lessons. Another student, a client of Ms. Butler’s, suggested that Ms. Steel sign with Ms. Butler.“So she came in one day and I said, ‘Spend a day with me,’” Ms. Butler said. “After that meeting I had to sign her. She was going to work.”Within weeks, Ms. Butler had found work for Ms. Steel. It was her presence, Ms. Butler said, that brought her jobs.“When she spoke, she spoke with authority,” she said. “Her voice was strong. And at her age she was memorizing lines without a problem.”Ms. Steel’s credits also include “Merry Christmas, Baby” (2016), a television movie; “Daisy Winters” (2017), a feature film; and four episodes of the prime-time soap opera “Saints & Sinners” in 2016, as well as a commercial for the South Carolina Lottery and a public service announcement for the DeKalb County Board of Health.Acting provided her with a “protective cubicle,” Ms. Steel told The Washington Post in 2018. “You’re protected from the world,” she said. “And that’s the first time in my life I felt absolutely secure.”On the set of “Black Panther,” she recalled, she became a grandmotherly presence to the cast, and each day she would get a hug and kiss from Mr. Boseman, who died in 2020.“We were one big melting pot of Black people, and we knew we were doing something special that had never been done before,” Ms. Steel told WSB-TV in Atlanta in 2018. “You know?” More