A resurfaced video of Chadwick Boseman tearing up as he talked about meeting two young fans with terminal cancer is going viral after the actor's death on Friday.
Boseman, who was fighting his own secret battle with colon cancer at the time, was visibly emotional when he talked about keeping in touch with the two boys who shared how excited they were to see "Black Panther."
“There are two little kids, Ian and Taylor, who recently passed from cancer. And throughout our filming, I was communicating with them, knowing that they were both terminal,” Boseman said in the 2018 video interview with SiriusXM.
“And what they said to me, and their parents (also) said, they're trying to hold on until this movie comes. And to a certain degree, you hear them say that say, and you're like ‘wow.’”
“It's a humbling experience, because you're like, 'This can't mean that much to them.' You know?” the "Black Panther" star said. “But seeing how the world has taken this on, seeing how the movement and how it's taken on a life of its own, I realize that they anticipated something great."
Boseman said it made him think of himself as a kid and the excitement he had waiting for Christmas, his birthday or to play a new video game. “I did live life waiting for those moments," he said. "And so, it put me back in the mind of being a kid, just to experience those two little boys anticipation of this movie."
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He took a long pause and got choked up when he talked about finding out the boys died before the film was released. "So yeah, it means a lot," he said of the friendship he had with Ian and Taylor.
Boseman died on Friday at age 43. His death shocked his millions of fans around the world, but many commented on social media how the resurfaced video "hits different right now."
One person wrote, "The way he says 'Cancer'... He sounds like, he really is talking about something he have an intimate connection with... Something like an old enemy. This is so sad..."
"Knowing now that he was diagnosed in 2016 gives this moment so much more weight and significance," another person added. "We were blessed to have a man with such a big heart for the time he was with us. Long live the King."
One fan simply wrote, "RIP to a real superhero."