Lupita Nyong’o breaks down watching Chadwick Boseman’s scene

Lupita Nyong’o still misses her late friend Chadwick Boseman, and said she probably always will.

The Oscar winner took part in a BFI London Film Festival event on Monday where he turned the conversation around Black Panther (2018). After appearing on screen in front of Boseman in a clip played for the crowd, she began to cry and detailed her pain.

“I have to admit, I haven’t seen the movie since Chadwick died, so I’m having a moment,” Nyong’o said on stage, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “Mourning is just love, with nowhere to put it, right… I don’t run away from tears or pain, you know? You just live there.”

“This experience will never be separate from the love that was formed,” he continued.

Boseman died at the age of 43 in 2020 from colon cancer. The South Carolinian had become a true roster spot just two years earlier after starring Black Pantherwhich broke box office records in 2018.

His character, T’Challa, became an inspiration to young black people around the world.

“I watch this clip and I’m filled with pain,” Nyong’o said after watching her character, Nakia, interact with Boseman’s, according to THR. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the tears of losing my friend. But I’m like, ‘We get to see him alive.’ And that’s so wonderful.”

Although the film became a genuine phenomenon at the time, Nyong’o recalled that there was “a lot of fear” from Marvel “executives”, who were allegedly “shaking in their boots a bit” about the prospects of a comic film with an all-black cast that turns a profit.

“We were too because we were like, we can only do this once,” Nyong’o said Monday.

Ryan Coogler’s project grossed more than $1 billion at the global box office and became the highest-grossing film with a predominantly black cast of all time. Nyong’o recalled Monday that her success “totally broke the myth that black people don’t sell.”

The “Screen Talk” event, which Nyong’o attended mainly to promote her latest film The wild robot it came just two months after she shared a heartbreaking Instagram dedication to Boseman that began with an unattributed quote about the grieving process.

“‘Mourning never ends. But it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It’s the price of love,'” he said. share Nyong’o in the caption, before concluding: “Remembering Chadwick Boseman. Forever.”This post originally appeared on HuffPost.