While also grappling with the loss of Chadwick Boseman, director Ryan Coogler learned to swim for the film’s underwater scenes and Letitia Wright sustained a major on-set injury.
The making of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which hits theatres today, was always going to be demanding, in more ways than one. The sequel to the hit Marvel superhero movie comes in the shadow of star Chadwick Boseman’s 2020 death following his private colon-cancer diagnosis, a loss that nearly made director Ryan Coogler leave directing behind. The cast and crew grappled with grief, and in a new Variety feature, many of them said behind-the-scenes battles continued to plague the high-profile production.
First off, much of the film’s action takes place in an underwater realm, and, as Coogler said, many in the Black community “were raised to have fear of water.” As such, the filmmaker said, “I had to figure out how to swim so I could direct this movie,” adding, “If the camera’s in the water, actors are in the water, I’ve got to be in there too.”
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While Coogler mastered free diving, his cast members also honed their aquatic abilities. “Before we started this film, I knew how to swim, but I wasn’t a confident swimmer,” Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Nakia, told the outlet. “I didn’t need to swim in public, that’s for sure. That’s a lifelong skill that I now have.”
Costar Angela Bassett, who says she could swim “a little bit” prior to shooting, said: “You know, Black girls have this history with water and their hair. Some of us can’t swim all that well, because it’s going to mess up that press and curl. It’s a whole thing.” After training, she went from holding her breath for “about 20 seconds, with effort” underwater to a complete two minutes.
Their fellow cast member Letitia Wright, who stars as late king T’Challa’s sister Shuri, endured an entirely different kind of mid-production struggle. She sustained an injury in August 2021 while filming a chase sequence involving a motorcycle. “I’m still processing it,” she told Variety about the accident, which paused production for about two months for her recovery. “I’m still working through it in therapy. It was really traumatic.”
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Wright was in Boston shooting alongside the film’s second unit crew, which means Coogler wasn’t present when she went to the hospital with a fractured shoulder and a concussion, among other injuries. “I mean, I love these actors. That’s me and Chad’s little sister,” the director said of getting the news. “Imagine getting that call that your little sister’s hurt. It’s the fucking worst thing in the world.” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige added: “It was horrifying on any production happening to anybody. It was particularly harsh on this production that was already, uh…emotionally strained.”
After her filming hiatus, Wright said, she was still dealing with post-concussion syndrome, but was grateful for her recovery. “I had great, great, great medical support, great patience on set,” she told Variety. “I’m just extremely proud of myself. I’m extremely proud of Ryan, of the team, for just the resilience—overcoming adversities every step of the way. When I finished filming, I cried like a little baby.”
Nyong’o said of the film’s taxing production: “We were able to lean into each other and commiserate together about our feelings and sadness. Being together really helped us move forward.”
This article originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
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