-The last time we talked was
Before "Avengers: Endgame" came out.
And that went on to be the biggest movie
in the whole wide world ever.
-Right, right, right, right. -Yeah, giant.
And then, I was reading something about you
and about, you know, "Black Panther."
And somewhere in the thing, it said that you auditioned for
a different superhero for Marvel at first.
-I did. Drax, yeah, yeah.
-You auditioned for Drax? -Yeah, weirdly enough, yeah.
-From "Guardians." -From "Guardians."
-Let me just show everyone who -- This is --
[ Laughter ]
This is Drax. -Batista.
-Yeah, so you auditioned for that?
-I did. I did.
You know, it's about going and playing.
I didn't think I was gonna get it.
And it's weird too, because it's a testament, I think,
to Marvel because after each film, you know --
"Ant-Man" has a different tone and feeling.
We didn't know what that was gonna be.
We didn't know what "Guardians" was gonna be.
So I didn't know what it was.
And I only had a few pages at that time.
So it was just good to come in and play
to see what they did with it.
-And they remembered you from that and they go,
"Oh, we got to put him -- we have a role for him,
but we don't want to tell him"?
-Well, sometimes, that's the way it works as an actor.
You go in knowing you're not gonna get it,
but you're meeting the people that, you know,
they might be like, "He's not this,
but we'll put him in this other thing."
So I feel like that was one of the moments when they were like,
"Hey, we could use him later."
-And I know during the interview for --
-Sarah Finn, casting director.
-Is that who did that? -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-I love giving shout-outs to casting directors.
-Sarah Finn, Sarah Finn. -Sarah Finn, good job, Sarah.
[ Cheers and applause ]
She did a great job, obviously. -Yeah, yeah.
-Really worked well.
I loved your interviews that you were doing during "Endgame"
because you had to give interviews saying that
you were in the movie, but you didn't want to spoil anything.
That's the way it works with Marvel movies.
They don't really want you to talk about much.
Talk about, you know, they say,
"Watch, go see our movie, but we can't spoil anything."
And you did something in your interviews that made me laugh.
I think we showed it on the show once.
But I want to show it to you while you're here.
Here's Chadwick Boseman not spoiling "Avengers: Endgame."
Take a look at this.
-People are, like, ready to see this movie.
They're buying the tickets. It's nuts.
I mean, how does that feel to know
that they love this film so much?
-It's great, but I'm dead.
[ Laughter ]
So I can't answer any questions about that.
-Oh, okay.
So you don't want to give us a spoiler or anything like that?
-I'm dead.
-What about "Black Panther 2"? Anything?
-I'm dead.
[ Laughter and applause ] -Oh, man.
-It made us laugh. We showed it on the show.
We loved it. It made me laugh.
-It was the most fun doing that, actually.
[ Laughter ]
-Where did you come up with, "I'm dead"?
-Well, it was the first time I had done press, you know,
in a minute since we shot it.
And so I was like, "You know what?
I can make this real easy.
I can just come out and say, 'I'm dead.'"
It's that simple.
-Because you did die or -- Yeah.
-Yeah, and the funny thing about it is, you coming in --
I didn't even know I was gonna die that day.
-No. [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, a lot of us, so today --
You don't have all the script at times, you know,
because of their secret, secretive about stuff.
-And you film all different endings and stuff.
-Yeah. Well, you have different scripts.
You have different scripts, you know, like different --
to throw people off.
-Wow. What are you gonna do?
Because you're filming "Black Panther 2" now.
You have all this time.
You can't just tell everyone you're dead.
-You know what? I don't know what it is --
what it's gonna be this time, but I'll come up with something.
-Yeah, yeah, you are.
-I got to do it tonight before we do the premiere,
because I'm on the red carpet tonight.
-Oh, that's right. -Yeah.
-Yeah, you can be like, "I'm back."
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-"I'm back." -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-I want to talk about "21 Bridges."
Congrats on this thing.
-Thank you.
-How did you get involved with this movie?
-Well, I was dead...
[ Laughter ]
-This is unbelievable.
-...after "Infinity War,"
and the Russo brothers came to me at the premiere after-party.
-Did a great job, yeah.
-Yeah, I think it was a consolation.
You're dead, so let me bring you another movie.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-And so, yeah, you know, they were like,
"We think you're perfect for this role."
And then I met Brian Kirk, the director.
I was like, "We're going to be a great collaborator."
And we decided to produce it.
-It's a good movie. It's very -- I like the premise.
There's a lot of action.
But basically set it up for everybody.
The idea is -- -Eight cops are killed.
I'm an NYPD detective who's known for, you know,
tracking down cop killers.
And so I shut down the city of Manhattan,
like, all of the entryways into it, including the 21 bridges,
so that we can trap the offenders and catch them.
-They're stuck on -- -Stuck on the island.
-Stuck on Manhattan. -Yeah.
-Yeah, you said 21 bridges.
I didn't know there was 21 bridges around Manhattan.
-I didn't either.
Actually, when we started, the script was called "17 Bridges."
[ Laughter ]
No, they didn't build four bridges but, you know,
I'm about to do a speech about the 21 bridges.
And I was like -- about the 17 bridges --
and they're like, "We might have got it wrong.
We might have got it wrong." [ Laughter ]
-Right, yeah. We got to recount.
-They were gonna rename the movie.
"If we can't figure it out,
let's call the movie 'Lockdown.'"
[ Laughter ]
-"Let's not even mention bridges.
We have to talk about bridges."
-I was like, "Figure this out for me."
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. 21 bridges.