Black Panther Icon Chadwick Boseman Immortalized With Posthumous Hollywood Walk of Fame Star

Hollywood honored Chadwick Boseman with a posthumous star on the Walk of Fame, a stirring ceremony that sparked an outpouring of emotion from those in attendance.

Chadwick Boseman has been gone since 2020, only 43, after a private fight with colon cancer. Yesterday, Hollywood did something it should have done while he was here: it put his name in the sidewalk. Family, friends, and a lot of fans gathered in Los Angeles for a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the tributes were exactly what you would expect for someone who was that good and that loved.

The ceremony

At the unveiling, three people who knew him well took the mic: Viola Davis, his Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom costar; Ryan Coogler, who directed him in Black Panther; and his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward Boseman. Each spoke, and each came at it from a different angle, all landing in the same place: he mattered.

Who said what

• Viola Davis kept it personal and spiritual. She said she still cannot bring herself to think of him as gone or use the word death when she talks about him. Working with him on the Oscar-winning drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, she saw him as a kind of powerful catalyst — something rare and potent that pulls real meaning out of the work. She celebrated him, said she hopes the angels sang him to a beautiful rest, and thanked him for leaving her with a spark that keeps pushing her toward deeper purpose. She closed by saying the star on the Walk of Fame is beautiful, but it still pales compared to how brightly she believes he shines in heaven.
• Ryan Coogler focused on who Boseman was to the people around him — a friend, a collaborator, and, in his words, a real leader. He boiled Boseman down to three core qualities and made it clear the guy led by example on and off set.
• Taylor Simone Ledward Boseman addressed him directly from the podium. She framed the day as recognition of his lifetime of artistry, his skill and devotion, and the way this literally cements his legacy as both hero and icon. She praised how he lived — with honor and truth — and called him as brilliant as he was beautiful, as courageous as he was kind. She ended with a simple message: they love him, they miss him, and they are grateful.

"When I think of Chadwick Boseman I think of three things: leadership, teaching and generosity."

It is impossible to measure the hole Boseman left behind, but this star is a public way of saying what a lot of people have been saying privately for years. The concrete is symbolic. The legacy is in the work and in the people he lifted while he was here.