Long before they co-starred together in 2018′s smash hit Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan actually played the same role on the soap opera All My Children.
The backstory is that Chadwick, then 26, was originally cast in the role of Reggie Montgomery, who came across as very stereotypical.
“It’s one of those things where you get a role, and you don’t really know,” Chadwick told The Wrap. “When I got it, I was like, ‘This is not part of my manifesto. This is not part of what I want to do. How can I make it work?’ Because with a soap opera, you don’t know the full scope of what’s gonna happen — you don’t know where they’re gonna take the character, because they don’t always know where the character is going. And because of that, there’s possibly room for me to adjust this and change it and make it so it’s stereotypical on the page but not on the screen.”
Chadwick was let go from the show after voicing his concerns, and Michael, then 16, was brought in as his replacement. Chadwick added, though, that by him speaking out, the role did change a bit for Michael.
“It’s hard to speak in the moment about how things we do can affect other people,” Michael added. “But this is a pure example, right here on the spot — we ain’t never talked about this before a day in our lives — to understand how what people do now can directly affect what other people do in the future. And the work that we’re doing on ‘Black Panther’ is hopefully doing the same thing for the next group of actors that are coming up, just like our predecessors opened up doors and made things easier for us.”
