Phylicia Rashad and students at Howard University's Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts helped announced Tuesday's nominations.
One year after his final Oscar nomination, the Academy Awards paid tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman once again.
During Tuesday's live-streamed announcement of the 2022 Oscar nominees, Phylicia Rashad and students at Howard University's newly-renamed Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts helped announced the Best Actor category, in which Boseman was nominated just last year, for his performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
"All of our students here are so inspired by Chadwick Boseman, a Howard grad who was so committed to this university," Rashad said. "And, as you know, Chadwick was nominated last year for Best Actor, and we are so honored to announce the nominees in this category."
Student John Woods III then announced the nominees, which included Denzel Washington for The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Boseman and Washington shared a special connection even before the Black Panther star -- who died in August 2020 at age 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer -- made it big. Washington famously helped pay for his and several other Howard University students' acting programs at England's Oxford University.
In fact, in a 2018 Rolling Stone interview, Boseman revealed that it was Rashad, who was one of Boseman's professors at the time, who had reached out to celebrity friends, including Washington, to ask to sponsor students.
Boseman also thanked Washington in a speech during the Malcolm X star's American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony in 2019.
“Many of you already know the story that Mr. Washington, when asked by Phylicia Rashad to join her in assisting nine theater students from Howard University who had been accepted to a summer acting program at the British Academy of Dramatic Acting in Oxford, gracefully and privately agreed to contribute," Boseman recalled. "As fate would have it, I was one of the students that he paid for…Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet.”
"There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington," he noted.
Washington, meanwhile, also served as producer on Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and spoke about the late star in a statement to ET following his death.
"He was a gentle soul and a brilliant artist, who will stay with us for eternity through his iconic performances over his short yet illustrious career. God bless Chadwick Boseman," the Oscar winner shared.
See more on Boseman's life and legacy in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
