Andy Serkis is a guy known for motion capture as well as regular acting on the big screen. While his mo-cap characters can get into all kinds of shenanigans with little duress to his actual body, his Black Panther stunts were a different beast. In fact, Serkis revealed in a recent interview that he thought Chadwick Boseman had broken his ribs during a chase scene early in the movie. He said:
This chase ends up with T'Challa, Chad's character, obviously Black Panther, you know chasing me and catching me. It was a night shoot and the very, very first take he kneed me so hard in the chest, 'cause he couldn't really see with his mask on. I felt like he had broken my ribs in that very first take.
If you've seen Black Panther, you should remember the impressive casino scene, which leads into a chase scene between T'Challa and Andy Serkis' Klaue. It was during the latter scene that a heavily costumed Chadwick Boseman really went for it in the scene, kicking Serkis quite hard. It's an example of a stunt gone wrong, but unfortunately, it wasn't the only take Serkis had to undergo of his bad guy character getting kicked.
Instead, he told People TV that he had to undergo the take 30 times. I'm assuming that Chadwick Boseman didn't kick him quite so hard each and every time, but when Andy Serkis recounted having to film the stunt over and over again, it did sound brutal:
Again, it was one of those times where I've just flown back and was sort of just getting over jetlag. I'd just flown into Atlanta and I thought I'd broken my ribs. We ended up doing it 30 times over and over again. I was like [groans], and the car tips over, it flies, you know there's a crash, all that falling out of the car. I was like, 'I'm gonna die. I'm literally going to die here.'
Alls well that ends well though. Both Chadwick Boseman and Andy Serkis have been praised for their roles in Black Panther and many have lamented that the movie did not set up Klaue to keep recurring as a villain in the Marvel universe. (He previously appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron before Black Panther.) From the sounds of things, if things had played out differently for his character in Black Panther, Andy Serkis may not have been excited about continuing filming stunts and such as part of the role.
At 54 years of age, it's not a huge shock that the process of filming movie takes over and over again might be getting harder. On the bright side, it doesn't seem as if Chadwick Boseman actually ended up breaking Andy Serkis' ribs, so things could have been worse.
You can currently catch Andy Serkis in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. In addition, Black Panther 2 has already been greenlighted by Marvel as well. See what's coming with our full guide.
