Chadwick Boseman has won a posthumous Emmy Award for his final performance.
During the first night of this year’s Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday, the late screen icon received the character voice-over performance award for his work in the Marvel series “What If … ?” Boseman’s fellow nominees included F. Murray Abraham (“Moon Knight”), Julie Andrews (“Bridgerton”), Maya Rudolph (“Big Mouth”), Stanley Tucci (“Central Park”), Jessica Walter (“Archer”) and Jeffrey Wright (“What If … ?”).
Boseman died at age 43 in August 2020 after a private, four-year battle with colon cancer.
In the first season of the animated series “What If…?” — which re-imagines the journeys of key Marvel superheroes — Boseman reprises his beloved role as T’Challa for an episode titled “What if … T’Challa became a Star-Lord.” (Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord, is portrayed by Chris Pratt in the live-action “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies.)
Unlike Pratt’s outcast version of the space scavenger — who resorts to nagging people in an effort to make the Star-Lord moniker catch on — T’Challa is universally revered and recognized by the honorable title thanks to his signature selflessness, innate goodness and advanced wisdom.
“Me, I am just an ordinary Junker,” says Boseman’s humble Star-Lord, a Robin Hood figure intent on restoring balance to the cosmos. “But there is one name you may know me by.”
Boseman also voices T’Challa, the Wakandan king better known as Black Panther, in subsequent installments of the Disney+ program. The influential actor made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” before starring in “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Avengers: Endgame” and, of course, “Black Panther.”
The T’Challa episode of “What If … ?” was dedicated to “our friend, our inspiration and our hero,” Boseman, when it arrived on Disney+ last summer.
On Sunday, the second round of Creative Arts Emmys will be handed out at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater ahead of the Primetime Emmy Awards next Monday.