Preview: “Our Truth”

I met Chad back in the mid 90s at Howard University. We were hanging out at our friend Camilla Forbes's crib with the wrath of young artists, rappers, and dancers. Chad was kind, charismatic, self-determined, and kind of mystical. I can see him now walking across the yard with a chewstick in his mouth and incense in his afro. In 1998, he was among a group of student leaders who sought to stop the university from closing its College of Fine Arts. I covered Chad and the protests for the student newspaper The Hilltop. A few months later, when our friend Camilla cast him in her first student play, I wrote the line in notes for the play bill. When I was offered the chance to write the Black Panther comic book for Marvel, Chad had already been cast in the movie to play T'Challa. And then when he died in 2020, I was asked to write a short obit to appear in the comic. After Chad passed, I attended a private ceremony for him in California. There was drumming, there was singing, there was a laying of hands on the casket, there was a lot of sadness and a lot of crying. But there was something beautiful in seeing these two families he'd pulled together, one from his days at the Mecca of Howard University, and then another at this Mecca that he'd made out of Black Panther. The weight of it all was borne by both families, but the weight of the latter, those who had to go on and make Wakanda forever, was different. They would have to mourn Chad while telling a story which had been defined by him. With these movies, it's just like my job as a director, you know? I don't think people fully appreciate any job that's not their own. The true day-to-day of my job is several hundred days of long days of getting other professionals to believe in ideas that I find truthful. You know what I'm saying? That's what my job is. I have to believe in something enough to go convince other professionals to believe in it as well for an extended period of time. And the moment that I stop believing in what I'm doing, whatever end product that I'm putting out is cooked, it's done. It has to be truthful for me, and if there's any element of, nope, for me, you know what I'm saying, like in the process, it's my job to weed that out so that I have a fighting chance of putting something out in front of the audience that the audience can believe and not be taken out of for two hours. You know what I'm saying? While they're eating their popcorn and next to strangers or while they're at the house and their kids are doing X1, they have to believe in some kind of truth that's happening on that screen, you know what I'm saying? And my truth is Chai was gone from the physical sense. He wasn't walking through that door, and in the world that we created, over the years, he was the God. And for somebody else to be him, you know what I mean? For us in the world that we created, we wouldn't have believed it, no matter how good the actor was, no matter how, you know what I'm saying? It would have been lacking the necessary truth for us to do a good job. And the truth is the world that we pulled from as artists. Our truth was lost, which is a fact of life. It's the gift and the curse of life. Heroes, great men, die. You know? Yeah. Wakanda Forever, the official Black Panther podcast, is a production of Proximity Media in partnership with Marvel Studios, Marvel Entertainment, and the Walt Disney Studios. Black Panther Wakanda Forever is co-written and directed by Ryan Coogler. My name is Ta-Nehisi Coates. I spent a few years writing the Black Panther comic book. I'm a friend of Ryan's, and I had the privilege of talking to him about the journey from Black Panther to Wakanda Forever before the line of film debuts. On this podcast, we'll explore all the many elements and players that helped Wakanda Forever ascend to new heights. So if you want to join us and hear more, follow, rate, and review Wakanda Forever, the official Black Panther podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and tell your friends and loved ones to do the same. To learn more about this podcast, visit ProximityMedia.com and follow @ProximityMedia, @Marvel, and @MarvelStudios on Twitter and Instagram.