*People close to Chadwick Boseman are speaking out about his private battle with cancer.
The “Black Panther” star was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2016, and never disclosed his diagnosis publicly. Many of his fans, friends and colleagues were shocked when he died on Aug. 28 following a 4 year-long battle with the disease.
Boseman’s longtime trainer Addison Henderson was among those who knew about the cancer diagnosis.
“I used to tell Chad, ‘Man, you remind me of my dad,'” Henderson explained, referring to his father who beat cancer four times, Complex reports. “‘You guys are fighters, and you never stop moving forward.’ For us, it was just like, ‘Let’s keep going, let’s keep doing what you want to do, let’s keep training.’ And then, me and Logan and his family, his wife [Taylor Simone Ledward], we were always just here to support him.”
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According to Boseman’s agent, Michael Greene, it was the actor’s mother Carolyn who inspired the decision to keep his illness on the low.
“[She] always taught him not to have people fuss over him,” Greene told The Hollywood Reporter.
“He also felt in this business that people trip out about things, and he was a very, very private person.”
Greene said Boseman was in “hard-core pain” during the filming of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” for Netflix, However, he “felt that being able to be with [co-star] Denzel [Washington] and to launch this cycle of [playwright] August Wilson at Netflix was so exciting to him.”
“I remember him and Tessa [Thompson] were offered a movie, it was about two slaves, and he was like, ‘I do not want to perpetuate slavery,'” Greene explained. “It was like, ‘We’re not going to keep perpetuating the stereotypes,’ and that’s why he wanted to show men of strength and of character.”
Boseman died at home, with his wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, and family by his side.
