There’s something courageous in her; she’s not going to walk into a space unprepared.
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.
], I was distraught about how terribly African women were portrayed in the West, if they ever were.
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.