Letitia Wright didn’t fully connect with Shuri’s arc in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever until reshoots
The Marvel sequel faced the pressure of following up one of the most successful movies of all time and paying tribute to its late star Chadwick Boseman
Aux News Letitia Wright
[This post contains spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever]
Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director and co-writer Ryan Coogler had long planned to adapt the Marvel Comics plot line in which King T’Challa’s sister Shuri takes up the role of their fictional country’s super-powered protector. After the 2020 death of star Chadwick Boseman, the timeline had to be moved up and the plot of the sequel reconfigured to focus on Wakanda’s grief as its new leaders clash with Namor and his aquatic kingdom. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Shuri actor Letitia Wright opens up about the moment in which she really connected with her character’s new path.
“It was a scene between myself and Namor that we were fleshing out a little bit more, the ways in which Shuri’s confidence rose to the occasion: ‘I belong to one of the most powerful nations in the world… so we should settle this in a peaceful manner,’” Wright says. “It shows her growth and the way she was reflecting on the way her brother did everything, the way he carried himself. Watching and observing my brother and the way he carried his role as T’Challa—I [realized] I have what it takes as an artist, as an actress, to go to places people probably didn’t think I could with this character.”
This realization didn’t click for the Small Axe actor until the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in reshoots, following a challenging round of principle photography marked by the cast and crew’s even fresher grief and production delays.
“Hey man, it took me a while!” she continues. “I feel like I’m on a transformative journey and I’m happy I got to represent Shuri, to be a vessel for Shuri to process some pain, because that helped me as well. And I feel like I’m growing as a woman as well; I’m definitely tapping into that level of maturity I need for the next section of my life, really. So all in, it’s been a beautiful experience and I am much stronger.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is in theaters now. According to a recent promo video, it won’t be hitting Disney+ until next year.
26 Comments
Marvel’s latest hero: Black Antivaxxer
aka Antivax Panther
aka Dumb Girl
While it isn’t mentioned here, I would argue with a huge problem the movie had in that Riri Williams was so brutally shoved in the middle of it. As a consequence, they had to spent so much resources in a failing attempt to justify her presence in these big moments which could have instead been used to strengthen the first half of the Shuri plotline.
That’s a big problem with almost all Marvel movies, constantly setting up the next movie or Disney+ show.
Yeah. It doesn’t help that Williams is not a particularly unique character. Not only does Marvel already have its share of cocky science geniuses, but the Black Panther movies already had one — she’s the lead of the movie. Also, the effects on her armor at the end looked oddly unfinished.
Additionally they couldn’t really even do anything with Riri as I) She’s an Iron Man character and this is not an Iron Man movie, and II) That show is about to come out. So she doesn’t have an arc, doesn’t achieve anything, they don’t really establish a story for her and even take the damn armor back at the end of the film.It was bad, y’all, like really, really bad.
I think some of the goal here was actually to establish that Riri is not an Iron Man character, and that her development as a hero has more to do with Shuri and others in Wakanda. Some of the desire to do it that way may come from the desire to have a black heroine’s chief inspirations also be black. Some of it may come from a desire to stop having Tony Stark be the cause of seemingly everything that happens in the Marvel universe, especially now that Stark is dead.
Except it didn’t really succeed in any of that. Riri used StarkTech to build her suit and continues to be visually about that character. While the Wakandans did help her build a suit here, they took it away at the end and she just.Riri doesn’t have a connection to Wakanda and even the movie actually set up connections to Stark. Regardless if it was a good or a bad decision. Besides, it should be pointed out that Ironheart was brought into the comics when everyone considered Stark dead.
Exactly. If they wanted to tie her into Wakanda instead of Tony, they should’ve redesigned her costume to match. In the movie (and comics), she looks like a cute anime version of Iron Man.
Woah, hold on, slow down! You mean to tell me Tony hasn’t been revived through multiverse shenanigans? It’s been years!
Not until Secret Wars.
Imagine a version of the movie where it’s some random scientist who invented the vibranium detector — someone not drawn from the comics, and therefore with no assumption that they will return. Would you expect that sort of minor supporting character to have an arc?All they really needed to do was cut the Ironheart stuff back to the absolute minimum (i.e. maybe a glimpse of a couple of half-finished gadgets that she hasn’t yet incorporated into a suit), leave her out of the final battle, and save the real thing for her show.
Filming the entirety of Ironheart’s homemade suit in near-total darkness so you can’t see it clearly for a single moment… this film has dethroned Captain Marvel as the hardest Marvel film to comprehend visually because it’s so poorly lit and framed.
I could live with that more than I could live with Big Fat Gut Namor. I’m sorry…I‘m sure the dude is talented…but that was NOT The Sub-Mariner.
She connected more with her character when antivaxxing was written into Shuri’s fictional backstory.
In an earlier draft, T’Challa dies of a preventable disease because of something Shuri saw on YouTube, she prepares to fight Namor by using a veterinary heartworm medication and is promptly killed, and it finally dawns on Wakanda that a highly advanced society should have moved on from a hereditary monarchy ages ago — but the suits at Disney weren’t having any of that.
Interesting how little press they had her do while promoting this film.
Letitia Wright is very sad she wasn’t asked to do more promotion.
They should make the new heart shape herb as a vaccine. So we get Okoye or Nakia as the new Black Panther.
Faux News might have run some promotions for her.
That’s really interesting, because over the course of the movie I didn’t connect with her arc until after the movie was over and I dreamed-up five better versions of it while putting my coat on.
I guess she couldn’t connect with the character because Shuri didn’t get all her information from YouTube.
I mean…they really should have recast. Not to mention that in the credits tag it’s like “she’s not even the queen of Wakanda”
I do feel bad for her in a way. Angela Bassett ran circles around everyone in that movie, acting wise. No shame to them, she was just that good.
Eh, I spent most of the movie hoping against hope that they’d make Okoye the new Panther. It was almost worth the inevitable disappointment for the way they handled the surprise cameo the way they did, but at the end of the movie I was hoping for Namor to win, so… no, I didn’t connect with her arc.