Sterling K. Brown Joins Stacked Black Panther Cast
By Amy Woolsey
The cast for Marvel’s Black Panther keeps getting better, adding an Emmy winner to its ranks. It’s enough to get even the most jaded moviegoer excited.
Marvel has never struggled to fill its cinematic superhero universe with big names. Iron Man, made all the way back in 2008, before the brand became a behemoth, featured the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard. But Black Panther might have the strongest ensemble of any Avengers movie so far, even surpassing, well, The Avengers.
Late Thursday afternoon, Marvel announced that Sterling K. Brown has joined the cast of Black Panther. Brown drew widespread acclaim in 2016 for his searing turn as prosecutor Christopher Darden in FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story miniseries, which earned him several awards, including a Primetime Emmy. He’s currently a regular on This Is Us, NBC’s popular family melodrama, which also looks to be a major awards contender.
Directed by Ryan Coogler from a script he penned with Joe Robert Cole (coincidentally, a writer on two of the best People v. O.J. episodes), Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman as the titular superhero. When not in costume, T’Challa serves as the ruler of a fictional African nation called Wakanda. According to the vague plot description on IMDb, Black Panther will see Wakanda in the midst of warfare and political turmoil.
The supporting cast includes Michael B. Jordan, who anchored Coogler’s Fruitvale Station and Creed; Lupita Nyong’o, who won an Oscar for her supporting performance in 12 Years a Slave; Forest Whitaker, who won an Oscar for his lead performance in The Last King of Scotland; Angela Bassett, an Oscar nominee for What’s Love Got to Do with It; Danai Gurira, beloved for her role as Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead; Daniel Kaluuya, best known for starring in the Black Mirror episode “Five Million Merits” and playing Emily Blunt’s partner in Sicario; and Florence Kasumba, who appeared in Captain America: Civil War as “Security Chief” (now, her character has a name: Ayo).
Phew. Well, the movie won’t come out for a while, but we can say this for sure: casting director Sarah Finn has done her job.
Brown has been working in film and television since 2002, when he played Officer Dade in the NBC crime drama Third Watch and “Coworker” in the Rick Famuyiwa movie Brown Sugar. His résumé includes appearances on ER, Supernatural, Alias, Person of Interest, and Masters of Sex, as well as a regular role on Lifetime’s Army Wives.
In Black Panther, Brown will play N’Jobu, a figure from T’Challa’s past. Hopefully, he will bring the same fiery confidence and emotional nuance he displayed in People v. O.J. to this new role.
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Black Panther is scheduled for release on February 16, 2018. Filming begins this month.