All My ChildrenCasting Director Hired Michael B. Jordan When 'Magnificent' Chadwick Boseman Was Fired After 1 Week

Mar. 15, 2025

Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman in 2018.Photo:Patrick McMullan via Getty

Patrick McMullan via Getty

All My Children’s longtime casting director is looking back on casting future superstarsMichael B. JordanandChadwick Bosemanfor the same role on the soap in the early 2000s.

“I did cast [Chadwick] Boseman, who became very famous, as we all know,” Wilson said. “And he was only on the show for just a week, because they really wanted the character to be about 16, 15 years old.”

Michael B. Jordan on ‘All My Children’ in 2004.Virginia Sherwood/Walt Disney Television via Getty

“[Boseman] had just come out of Juilliard. He was a magnificent actor to audition,” Wilson continued. “And long story short, they fired him. And then I put in Michael B. Jordan, who became just as famous. And he was only about 15 at that time. Now, I could go on and on, but I think I don’t want to do that.”

Wilson may have been referring to allegations Boseman made years later that he was fired fromAll My Childrenaftervoicing concerns about the show’s portrayal of his character.

“It’s one of those things where you get a role, and you don’t really know,” he toldThe Wrapin a 2019 joint interview with Jordan. “When I got it, I was like, ‘This is not part of my manifesto. This is not part of what I want to do. How can I make it work?’ Because with a soap opera, you don’t know the full scope of what’s gonna happen — you don’t know where they’re gonna take the character, because they don’t always know where the character is going. And because of that, there’s possibly room for me to adjust this and change it and make it so it’s stereotypical on the page but not on the screen.”

Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman in 2018.Getty Images for Disney

Getty Images for Disney

In a September 2020 remembrance forThe Hollywood Reporterfollowing the actor’s death, Boseman’s longtime agent Michael Greene wrote that Boseman had objected to the fact that hisAll My Childrencharacter’s mother was a “crackhead” and his father was not in the picture.

“He goes, ‘I’m not playing those images,’ and he went into the writers room, and they fired him,” Greene wrote.

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“I remember going home and thinking, ‘Do I say something to them about this? Do I just do it?’ ” Boseman recalled in his 2019 interview withThe Wrap. “And I couldn’t just do it. I had to voice my opinions and put my stamp on it.”

Despite losing the job, Boseman felt that his criticisms led the show’s writers to improve the character for Jordan.

“They said, ‘You are too much trouble,’ but they took my suggestions, or some of them. And for me, honestly, that’s what this is about,” Boseman said.

source: people.com