Chadwick Boseman knew this well and decided to live his life to the fullest. Find Actor Dies Latest News, Videos & Pictures on Actor Dies and see. Every passing day is a step closer to your grave. In both Ma Rainey and 'Fences," Todd Black was one of Washington's producing partners, and Viola Davis is the female lead actor (different characters) in both films. LOS ANGELES Chadwick Boseman was buried near his South Carolina hometown six days after he died at his home in Los Angeles, according to a death certificate obtained Monday by The. Actor Chadwick Boseman, who played Black icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown. The family of Chadwick Boseman, the Black Panther star who had been widely expected to receive a posthumous best actor Oscar for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, have come to the defence of. Coincidentally, the original play upon which the film of 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' was based, was written by the legendary and multiple award winning black playwright (who had the same first name as the month in which Chadwick died), August Wilson, who famously wrote a cycle of ten plays based on black lives and experiences during ten separate decades of the twentieth century, several of which Washington had previously either acted in, directed, produced, or a combination, both on stage, and in the only previous Wilson work to be produced and released as a feature film before Ma Rainey, Fences (2016), which Washington directed, produced, and acted in, and which was released in 2016, the same year in which Chadwick was first diagnosed with colon cancer. Chadwick's friend, Denzel Washington was one of the producers of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), the last film Chadwick completed before his death in August 2020.