Chadwick Boseman&x27;s Widow Simone Shares Oscars Speech She Would Have Given If Husband Won Best Actor in 2021 Tommy McArdleFri, March 13, 2026 at 11:35 PM UTC 0 Simone Ledward Boseman and Chadwick Boseman attend the 25th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on January 27, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.
Chadwick Boseman's Widow Simone Shares Oscars Speech She Would Have Given If Husband Won Best Actor in 2021
Tommy McArdleFri, March 13, 2026 at 11:35 PM UTC
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Simone Ledward Boseman and Chadwick Boseman attend the 25th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on January 27, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty -
Chadwick Boseman's widow Simone Ledward-Boseman shared the acceptance speech she would have read at the 2021 Oscars had her late husband won Best Actor for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Anthony Hopkins won that year's award for The Father over Chadwick, who died at 43 in 2020
Best Actor was notably announced as the final award of that year's ceremony; Hopkins did not attend due to the COVID-19 pandemic
Chadwick Boseman's widow Simone Ledward-Boseman is sharing the speech she would have read at the Academy Awards had her late husband received a posthumous Best Actor award at the 2021 Oscars for the movie Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Ledward-Boseman, who was romantically connected to the actor starting in 2015 and married him before his death at 43 in 2020, shared the speech in The Hollywood Reporter's oral history of the 2021 Oscars five years later, published on Friday, March 13.
Anthony Hopkins famously won that year's award, which was handed out at the very end of the ceremony, despite many expecting that the Film Academy had saved one last moment to honor Boseman.
"It says: I will never stop thanking God for you. Thank you to the most high God. Thank you, Carolyn and Leroy Boseman [Chadwick's parents], and your mothers, and your mothers' mothers. What purity. What honesty. What pain. What a role. What work," Ledward-Boseman's speech, which she told the outlet she found on her computer, read. "What beautiful, intricate humanity. What courage, bravery, fearlessness, honesty, commitment, humanity, strength. A spirit that refused to surrender to despair. What an actor. What an artist. What a cast. What a team. What a vision. Glory be to the most high God. Long live the King."
Hugo Soto-Martínez, Derrick Boseman, Ryan Coogler, Simone Ledward-Boseman, Kevin Boseman, Viola Davis, Jerry Neuman and Steve Nissen at Chadwick Boseman's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, November 20, 2025Credit: JC Olivera/Variety via Getty
THR's new oral history on that year's Academy Awards, the first ceremony after the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, features quotes from interviews with more than 40 people, including filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who produced that year's Oscars ceremony along with Jesse Collins and Stacey Sher. In the piece, Soderbergh, 63, explained that the Best Actor award was moved to the ceremony's end because they felt "there was nowhere to go after" a potential Boseman win and his widow appearing onstage to accept on his behalf.
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"I'm going to just spill all secrets. Everything we did was about kindness. Chadwick Boseman's widow was coming in. She didn't go to any other shows. We had a special camper for her that she could be in so that she didn't have to sit in the room," Sher added. "The idea was that if it was before best picture, and Chadwick lost, she'd have to sit through to the end, and we didn't want to put her in that position. It was actually done to be as kind to her as possible and keep her in the room for the least amount of time that she had to be because it was a brave and intense thing for her to be dealing with her grief publicly."
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Simone Ledward-Boseman and Chadwick Boseman attend a basketball game on October 22, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.Credit: Allen Berezovsky/Getty
Ledward-Boseman most recently appeared in public to honor Chadwick at his Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony in November. She admitted that her husband losing out on Best Actor that year felt "maybe more than a little uncomfortable" when the ceremony ended moments after Hopkins, who did not travel to attend the ceremony while the pandemic still raged, won the award. (THR also reported that Hopkins was told he could not join the telecast remotely or pre-tape an acceptance speech.)
"But to be nominated for best actor is still an incredible accomplishment and is still recognition of his work," she added. "I don't think that it was the intention of the producers for it to be uncomfortable … Looking back, it would have been better if Best Picture was last. It would've been a nice reset before the end of the night to have another celebratory moment, for someone that was hopefully able to walk up onstage and accept the award and give a speech and all of that."
on People
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Source: Entertainment
Published: March 13, 2026 at 07:45PM on Source: PRIME TIME
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