‘THE WORST THING’

Letitia Wright Recovered for Four Months After ‘Traumatic’ Accident on ‘Wakanda Forever’ Set

Her injuries were worse than originally thought, with the 29-year-old saying she’s still in therapy over a year later.

Letitia Wright says she’s still dealing with the aftermath of the “traumatic” accident that saw her fall off a moving bike while filming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

The Guyanese-British actress, 29, told Variety that she’s still seeing medical specialists more than a year after the August 2021 incident.

“I’m still processing it,” she said. “I’m still working through it in therapy. It was really traumatic.”

The accident took place while she was shooting a chase sequence with the film’s second unit in Boston. Wright was riding a bike mounted on a “biscuit rig” at the time, which was supposed to make for a more realistic scene.

“It clipped a median and sheared the bike off, and it tumbled,” Wakanda Forever producer Nate Moore told the magazine for its cover story on the Marvel sequel, which is expected to dominate the global box office this weekend after it premieres on Friday.

Wright suffered a fractured shoulder, a concussion, and other unspecified injuries.

Marvel president Kevin Fiege, who flew up to see Wright in the hospital along with director Ryan Coogler, said the accident was “particularly harsh” on a production that was already “emotionally strained” after the sudden death of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman from a year earlier. The cast was devastated after his death, and the script for the sequel had to be completely reworked.

Coogler says he learned of Wright’s accident through a phone call. “It was about how you can imagine,” he said of the call. “I mean, I love these actors. That’s me and Chad’s little sister. Imagine getting that call that your little sister’s hurt. It’s the fucking worst thing in the world.”

Coogler and the crew had already spent a couple months focusing on scenes without Wright before production was officially paused in November 2021. Wright’s character, Shuri, is one of the franchise’s protagonists and the little sister to the late Boseman’s T’Challa.

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Wright recovered in London for four and a half months before filming resumed in January 2022, with the film’s crew managing to keep the extent of her injuries under wraps. After the accident, a Disney spokesperson simply said she suffered “minor injuries.” When production was halted a couple months later, Wright’s reps released a statement that read, “Letitia has been recovering in London since September from injuries sustained on the set of Black Panther 2.”

Wright came under fire during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic after she tweeted a video by a vaccine skeptic in December 2020. After facing swift backlash, she deleted her Twitter account. A Hollywood Reporter story claimed that she was unvaccinated and had shared doubts about the COVID vaccine on the set of Wakanda Forever.

Moore, the film’s producer, told Variety that the actress was never asked about her COVID vaccination status as part of her job. He also denied that she spread vaccine skepticism on set.

“It’s not a question we asked of anybody, to be quite honest,” Moore said. “She never talked about her views either way. We read the stories that I would argue were unfair, because I don’t know where they’re coming from. As someone who literally is on set next to the monitor all the time, I feel like I would have heard it.”

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Adam MannoEntertainment Reporter

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