Michael Kovac/Getty Images for AFI; Kevin Winter/Getty Images for WarnerMedia
Netflix is set to release Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, one of Chadwick Boseman’s final films, later this year. Denzel Washington produced the film, but he and Boseman go back a lot further than this project.
In 2018, Boseman revealed that Washington helped pay for his and his Howard University peers’ tuition for a summer drama program at Oxford University.
“I’ve basically been holding this secret my whole career. When I came back, I got a beneficiary letter and it said Denzel Washington paid for you,” Boseman told Jimmy Fallon in a March 2018 interview.
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“He was a gentle soul and a brilliant artist, who will stay with us for eternity through his iconic performances over his short yet illustrious career,” Washington said in a statement, via People. “God bless Chadwick Boseman.”
Although Boseman kept this story about Washington quiet for several years, he shared it in full at the American Film Institute (AFI) tribute for Washington last year.
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“Many of you already know the story that Mr. Washington, when asked by Phylicia Rashad to join her in assisting nine theater students from Howard University who had been accepted to a summer acting program at the British Academy of Dramatic Acting in Oxford, gracefully and privately agreed to contribute,” Boseman said at the tribute. “As fate would have it, I was one of the students that he paid for,” he continued. “Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet…There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington.”
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