Wakanda is an African nation untouched by the ills of colonialism, so it would make sense for Wakandans to have accents of their own. But Chadwick Boseman said this move wasn't a clear choice for Marvel.
"They felt that it was maybe too much for an audience to take," Boseman told The Hollywood Reporter of the comic book giant. "I felt the exact opposite—like, if I speak with a British accent, what's gonna happen when I go home?" Boseman added that it was a "deal-breaker" for him if he couldn't perform Black Panther with an accent. "I was like, 'No, this is such an important factor that if we lose this right now, what else are we gonna throw away for the sake of making people feel comfortable?'"
He won that fight and the rest was history. In the film, Boseman's character King T'Challa aka Black Panther speaks in South Africa's Xhosa accent. And if the audience felt any disconnect, they certainly didn't show it. Black Panther's opening weekend brought in $202 million in the box office, making it the fifth highest-grossing opening weekend in history. The Marvel film, which features a nearly all-black cast, went on to become 2018's highest-grossing movie domestically with $700 million in box office sales and the second-highest grossing movie worldwide this year so far with $1.3 billion. (Avengers: Infinity War is in the top spot with over $2 billion.) Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige called it the "best movie we've ever made."
Boseman has no regrets either on taking on the role—especially at a time when Donald Trump is president. "Films can be escapism, but I don't think this was escapism," he said. "I think this was aspirational. Some people may say, 'Well, that country doesn't exist, that's not real,' but we were pulling from all real things. We were pulling from the great empires; we were pulling from the hairstyles and the culture and the clothing; we were pulling from mixtures of politics that exist; and we were trying to create not a perfect world, but a leader and a country that was aspirational, that gets it right. And so the fact that the world could look at that and draw from it during this particular time? Only God can do that, only something more powerful and more knowing than ourselves can place it in this particular time."
