'The Forgiven' star tells ET that he could take a page out of Obi-Wan Kenobi's playbook for when Marvel returns to Wakanda.
**Warning: This article spoils the fate of a character in Black Panther.**
Forest Whitaker is ready to be the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Black Panther.
ET spoke with the actor at the Los Angeles premiere of his new film, The Forgiven, where he talked about how he'd come back to the Marvel epic for the sequel, despite the tragic fate he suffered at the ritual combat ceremony between T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan).
"I guess I would be like an Obi-Wan Kenobi, you know, who comes back, he talks from the ancestral plane to give advice to T'Challa," the 56-year-old Oscar winner said of possibly returning. "Chadwick's amazing in the film. Ryan Coogler's done such an amazing job, so proud to be in it."
Meanwhile, in The Forgiven, Whitaker plays South African anti-apartheid and civil rights activist Desmond Tutu. He opened up to ET about how he got into the role of such a revered political figure.
"It was more difficult to try to find... to keep the center of Desmond Tutu," he explained. "The sort of -- I don’t wanna say calm -- but graceful way in which he looks at the world and stuff and still keep the sense of humor that he has. Trying to pull those things together, so you can catch the spirit of the man."
Luckily, Whitaker had the good fortune of meeting with Tutu himself, now 86, to capture his essence.
"I was trying to understand the man, and I knew his laugh, and I knew his sense of humor, I knew how he felt, his passion, his faith, you know what I mean," he shared. "But trying to capture it by sitting with him. So I sat with him in his home, I sat with him at his offices. We talked quite a bit and it was very helpful to me."
And Whitaker was breathing a sigh of relief when he found out that Tutu approved.
"I was quite moved because I'd been really scared about it, you know, because he impresses me so much, I was worried that I wouldn't reach what he wanted and his expectations," Whitaker added. "But he wrote an amazing, amazing note about the film."
The Forgiven is now playing.
Watch the video below for our previous interview with Whitaker and Angela Bassett about Black Panther.
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