Janelle Monáe will “never forget” her last dance with Chadwick Boseman.
The Antebellum actress — who met the late Black Panther star through mutual friend Lupita Nyong’o — has opened up about a special moment they shared at the Oscars earlier this year, just months before he sadly died in August at 43 following a secret battle with colon cancer.
Speaking to Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show,” she said: “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. 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.”
Monáe also recalled a night they both shared with Nyong’o while filming in Atlanta.
She added: “We ate, we listened to music. 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.”
Monáe’s comments come after Nyong’o posted an emotional tribute to her friend and admitted she is “struggling to think and speak” about Boseman in past tense.
She wrote: “I write these words from a place of hopelessness, to honor a man who had great hope. I am struggling to think and speak about my friend, Chadwick Boseman, in the past tense. It doesn’t make sense. The news of his passing is a punch to my gut every morning.
“I am aware that we are all mortal, but you come across some people in life that possess an immortal energy, that seem like they have existed before, that are exactly where they are supposed to always be – here! … that seem ageless… Chadwick was one of those people.”
