Words by: Sentwali Holder
The late, great Chadwick Boseman just won another posthumous award, this time at the annual Screen Actor’s Guild Awards. He won the honor for outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
Boseman’s win makes history as this marks only the fourth time a Black actor has won in the lead actor SAG category following Forest Whitaker in “The Last King of Scotland,” Jamie Foxx in “Ray” and Denzel Washington in “Fences.”
His widow Taylor Simone Ledward, humbly accepted the award and gave a moving and emotional speech on his behalf during the all but virtual ceremony. The SAG Awards aired this past Sunday night on TNT.
Ledward gave thanks to the cast and crew of the film, not to mention iconic playwright August Wilson, whose 1984 play was adapted into the Netflix film starring Boseman and Viola Davis. “If you see the world unbalanced, be a crusader that pushes heavily on the seesaw of the mind,” Ledward said. “That’s a quote by Chadwick Boseman.”
This would be Boseman’s last screen performance, for the star of “Black Panther,” who succumbed to colon cancer in August 2020, at the young age of 43. Posthumously “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” has been a shining star during this year’s awards season, which has won Boseman several awards, including a Golden Globe.
The SAG Awards tends to be a telltale precursor to the Oscars. Voted on by roughly 160,000 actors, Boseman beat out Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”), Gary Oldman (“Mank”) and Steven Yeun (“Minari”) for the award.
