Letita Wright Opens Up About Wanting To Empower Women With Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

On the surface, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is a movie centered around grief, but it's also a female tour-de-force as Wakanda's women become the sole focus of the Marvel franchise, which is something that the main star, Letitia Wright, relished in. 

"It was an opportunity to do what I always wanted to do, which is inspire," Wright said as part of Variety's "Actors on Actors" series, "especially for us as Black women."

Focusing on the women of Wakanda in the second "Black Panther" was something that ultimately made the most sense in wake of T'Challa's (Chadwick Boseman) passing, according to producer Nate Moore. "It was just the right story to tell," Moore told reporters at a Disney press event in October 2022. "I mean, these were the characters who were most affected by T'Challa's passing ... If we would have had to wedge in some new male characters just to have that voice that would have been — that would have seemed more performative than telling the story we told."

For Wright, getting to shine a spotlight on the women of Wakanda wasn't just great for the franchise, but it was also great for pop culture and representation as a whole, especially since female superheroes are still underrepresented in comparison to male superheroes on screen. To Wright, honoring Boseman may have been the overarching goal, but it wasn't her only one.