'It was a privilege to work with Chadwick'

Mumbai: 'What If...?' executive producer Brad Winderbaum said that 'it was humbling to work with Chadwick Boseman on the animated series'. Brad believes that the late actor 'wanted to dig deep' for his performance as King T'Challa.

Boseman, who died at the age of 43 in 2020 due to colon cancer, achieved global stardom as King T'Challa of fictitious African country Wakanda aka superhero Black Panther in the 'Marvel Cinematic Universe'.

Created by A C Bradley, the animated series reimagines certain characters and events from MCU.

"It was such a privilege to be able to work with Chad on the project. He gave every performance his all. He worked with us and with director Brian Andrews to craft these new versions of T'Challa, because he appears, for the season, as many different versions of the character actually," said Brad.

He added, "And he enthusiastically wanted to dig deep into who the child was and how these new situations would change him. It was a real honor to work with him. Boseman was so humbling that he did it knowing that it could be his last performance as the character."

The show, directed by Andrews, features fan-favorite characters, including Peggy Carter, T'Challa, Doctor Strange, Killmonger, Thor and more.

'What If...?' features the voices of more than 50 MCU cast members who reprise

their roles, including Andy Serkis, Boseman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Hemsworth, Dominic Cooper and many others.

"It was not until I and Kevin Feige were on the other side of the Infinity saga, that we had the opportunity to make shows for 'Disney Plus'. So Kevin asked for ideas and I texted him one night when I got home and by the next day, we were already kind of thinking about how to do it. It became very clear very early that the only way to do it would be through animation, because of the infinite canvas that we needed to explore," shared Winderbaum.

The challenge, Winderbaum said, was to stop coming up with What if' concepts, as the possibilities were endless.

"At a certain point, you just have to almost set a timer and say, 'All right, we are done'. Because you could sit there all day long, and just keep coming up with 'What if...?' concepts. But we also realise that the 'what if' question was not as important as the 'when' and 'what' question and that the concepts that we ended up producing, were the ones that I think give us the best opportunity to tell a well-rounded story about a particular character," he said.