On the Monday, September 26 edition of “Tamron Hall,” award-winning actress Letitia Wright makes her daytime debut, discussing her life-changing role in “Black Panther” and the important message in her new film “The Silent Twins.” Wright opened up about the loss of her co-star and friend Chadwick Boseman and shared how she felt his presence during production on the hit film’s sequel. Kitt Shapiro, daughter of the legendary actress/musician Eartha Kitt, later joined the show to discuss her viral TikTok in which she addressed those questioning her racial identity and whether or not she was Eartha’s biological daughter. While sharing exclusive photos from the family’s personal photo album, Kitt also shared details from her memoir, Eartha & Kitt: A Daughter’s Love Story in Black and White, a tribute to her late mother. See the video clip inside…
Letitia Wright on feeling Chadwick Boseman’s spirit while filming the ‘Black Panther’ sequel:
“As you guys know, ‘Black Panther’ is a blessing to my life. ‘Shuri’ is a blessing, not only to me, but to the world and to so many Black young girls and I always promised God if I stepped back into acting I would do projects that felt honorable and as a kid I always wanted to inspire – when I saw Keke Palmer – I wanted to inspire the world the way Keke Palmer inspired me and ‘Shuri’ was the first time I got to do that on a massive scale right? So when this unfortunate event happened [getting injured on set] and I had to take about three months out, I went back home and my mom received me with tears in her eyes and I just had to sit with myself and decide ‘how are you going to bounce back from this? How are you going to get back on the set to fulfill your purpose that God blessed you with?’ And I could hear my brother [Chadwick Boseman] just tell me that I could do it. I didn’t feel like I could do it. I didn’t feel like I could go back. Tamron jumps in to say, “so you heard Chadwick say ‘ you can do this?’ “Yeah, and in those moments I admired his journey even more because he dealt with something that we didn’t know about until he passed away and you know, I’m trying to contain it, but I never got to say goodbye to my brother [Boseman] so just going through that situation, it was another opportunity for leadership and strength to come out and just for him to be such a leader at a time when he was facing so much and I just felt like once I got the healing I needed and I went back, I finished stronger.”
Letitia Wright on why she only chooses acting roles that speak to her spirit:
“It was my desire to be accepted but I wasn’t fully fulfilled in who I was. I saw the actors and I saw the fame and I saw the notoriety and I wanted that but I wasn’t fulfilled within who God made me to be. I doubted myself every day. When I booked a job, I couldn’t enjoy that job because I was thinking of the next thing I wanted and I wasn’t in a place of gratitude and I wasn’t in a place of receiving exactly what God had for me so it started to play on my mental health and it was that decision that I made in Toronto – I had a film out there at the Toronto Film Festival– I thought that things were going well and I heard this small quiet voice telling me that I was going to take a step back from acting and I thought, this voice was crazy and I did, I took a step back and it was one of the bravest things I ever had to do because I got so many people telling me something was wrong. I had agents at the time emailing me like – ‘are you ok? Do you need money? What’s going on?’ But they couldn’t understand that in order to feel fulfilled I needed to take a step back and it was what I did.”
