Simone Ledward Boseman is opening up and sharing intimate details about her late husband and beloved actor Chadwick Boseman. And what she has to say will no doubt spark all the feels.
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Simone has spoken out before about her thoughts and feelings following the “Black Panther” star’s death in her first-ever TV interview in November 2022. But now, she pulling the layers back even more, sitting down for an in-depth and wide-ranging interview on the TODAY show recently.
In particular, she shared that the “Marshall” star was initially diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2016, just two years after they met. And while it was of course scary, they both were confident that he’d beat it and they’d go on to live their lives.
“To us, it was going be a challenging moment, but something that he would come out on the other side of and be fine. And they would do a surgery, and he would do some chemo afterward, and he would be OK,” Simone explained. “And there wasn’t much talk at all of the possibility of him not being OK on the other side of that.”
She also shared that they never thought about the alternative, a.k.a. him not making it through and consequently never talked about it. Now, looking back, Simone wished they could’ve made space for some of those conversations.
“There are a lot of moments where I look back on that time and wish that we had been able to find a way to talk about that,” Simone said, describing the option of him not making it like “a betrayal of faith.”
Thankfully, the “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” star’s health would improve as he would go into remission in 2018—the same year “Black Panther” was released in theaters and achieved worldwide success and acclaim. For their unit, Simone and the “42” star had twice the amount of things to celebrate, the global success of “Black Panther” and a clear scan from his cancer.
“They didn’t know we were celebrating that he had a clear scan. But we were celebrating that, too. It felt like we got another chance,” she said.
However, by the end of that year, Boseman would be diagnosed for the second time with colon cancer, only this time it was Stage 4. And sadly for Simone, she wasn’t aware that he was already going through symptoms until it had already reached a tricky point.
“I didn’t know that he was experiencing anything until he had already been to the doctor twice. It all seemed to come about very suddenly. It was a matter of weeks that he started not feeling well,” she explained.
As you well know by now, Boseman would pass away in August 2020. Reflecting on her grieving process now, nearly six years since his heart-breaking death, Simone shared: “The edges get less sharp, I think, is the best way to put it. There are still edges and there are still a lot of painful moments. But I think it becomes easier to find the love in those moments, as well. You become more accustomed to carrying the weight of grief. But it doesn’t go away.”
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