Chadwick Boseman was honored at the 2021 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, April 4.
“If you see the world unbalanced, be a crusader that pushes heavily on the seesaw of the mind,” the late actor’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, said while accepting his award. “That’s a quote by Chadwick Boseman. Thank you.”
The late actor was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom alongside Fox Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Anthony Hopkins (The Father), Gary Oldman (Mank), and Steven Yeun (Minari).
Also, Boseman was up for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role for Da 5 Bloods. Both of the late actor’s films earned nods for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
The South Carolina native had previously won his first SAG Award in January 2019 for Black Panther with his marvel’s co-stars for Most Outstanding Performance.
“We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on,” Boseman said on behalf of the cast in their acceptance speech at the time. “We know what it’s like to be the tail, but not the head. We know what it’s like to be beneath, but not above. And that is what we went to work with every day. Because we knew not that we would be around during awards season or that it would make a billion dollars, but we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world — that we could be full human beings in the roles that we were playing. That we could create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see.”
Boseman’s widow, 30, received the Golden Globe for Best Actor, Motion Picture Drama on his behalf in February for his work in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
“He would thank God. He would thank his parents. He would thank his ancestors,” Ledward, 30, said as she broke down in tears. “He would say something beautiful, something inspiring, something that amplifies that little voice inside of all of us. I don’t have his words, but we have to take all the moments to celebrate those we love.”
However, Boseman could become the third actor ever to win a posthumous Academy Award on Sunday, April 25, after Peter Finch (Network) and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight). He has been nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
