Janelle Monáe Recalls A Special Memory Of Chadwick Boseman

By Aynslee Darmon. Published: 16 Sep 2020 5:37 PM

Janelle Monáe is looking back at some special moments with Chadwick Boseman.

The singer/actress, 34, joined Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” on Tuesday and opened up about the late actor while promoting her new film “Antebellum”.

According to Monáe, she first met Boseman through Lupita Nyong’o while they filmed “Black Panther” in Atlanta. Monáe was in the same city at the time recording her 2018 album Dirty Computer.

“I just said, ‘I would love to host you guys,’ and they all showed up one night. We ate, we listened to music,” she explained. “I just remember Chadwick that night being so present. We were not talking about work, we were not talking about the past, we were just right there. He was playing drums. We were dancing.”

And Boseman helped Monáe gain the confidence to release the new music, “The encouragement I got from him, seeing him smile, seeing him dance, you could feel that his spirit was one of one wanting to give, give people the feeling of love, the feeling of hope—even at parties where we’re supposed to be drinking and acting wild and crazy.”

She added, “He still took that time to tell me that he was proud, he was excited, he would dance with me and made me feel like, yeah, I can release this project.”

“I had a chance to dance with him one last time this year,” she shared. “It was at an Oscars party and he tapped me on my shoulder. I’ll never forget it. He tapped me and he said, ‘Let’s have this dance.’ And we danced for a good three, four minutes, smiling,” Monáe continued. “I just remember that moment and I will always hold that dear to me and I will always try to live in the present because I saw him living in the present.”

Boseman died following a long battle of colon cancer on August 28.