Jabarkan Karier dari Chadwick Boseman

1993–2007: Theater, Deep Azure, dan televisi

Chadwick tinggal di Brooklyn, Kota New York, pada permulaan kariernya. Pada tahun 2000, ia dinobatkan sebagai Drama League Directing Fellow. Ia menyutradarai produksi termasuk The Colored Museum karya George C. Wolfe (George kemudian menyutradarai Chadwick dalam peran terakhirnya) dan pementasan Dutchman karya Amiri Baraka. Ia bekerja sebagai instruktur drama di Schomburg Junior Scholars Program, bertempat di Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture di Harlem antara 2002 dan 2009. Dia menjadi terkenal sebagai penulis naskah dan aktor panggung pada tahun 2002, tampil dalam beberapa sandiwara dan memenangkan penghargaan AUDELCO pada tahun 2002 atas perannya dalam Urban Transitions karya Ron Milner. As a member of the National Shakespeare Company of New York, he played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and Malcolm in Macbeth. He directed and wrote plays as part of the Hip-hop theater movement; his works included Rhyme Deferred (co-written with Howard classmate Kamilah Forbes), in which he also performed, and Hieroglyphic Graffiti. Rhyme Deferred was commissioned for a national tour, as well as featuring in The Fire This Time anthology of works, while Hieroglyphic Graffiti was produced at a variety of locations, including the National Black Theatre Festival in 2001. Combining modern African-American culture and Egyptian deities, it is set in Washington, D.C. and was picked up by the New York Hip-Hop Theatre Festival and Tennessee State University's summer stock theatre program in 2002. It was also the Kuntu Repertory Theatre's 2002–03 season launch production. At the 2002 Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, Boseman also gave a one-man show called "Red Clay and Carved Concrete".

In 2003, Boseman was cast in his first television role, an episode of Third Watch, and began playing Reggie Montgomery in the daytime soap opera All My Children. He was fired from All My Children after voicing concerns to producers about racist stereotypes in the script; the role was subsequently re-cast, with Boseman's future Black Panther co-star Michael B. Jordan taking the part. Boseman had wanted to work around the stereotypes of the character, feeling that being in a soap opera would give him more room for improvisation as the writers often do not initially plan a full story; his (then-future) agent said that when Boseman was given the second script and learned that his character's parents were a drug addict and an absent father, Boseman confronted the creators. He reflected on the experience in his 2018 commencement address to Howard University, saying that it "seemed to be wrapped up in assumptions about us as black folks [and he] would have to make something out of nothing." His other early television work included episodes of the series Law & Order, Cold Case, CSI: NY, and ER.

His best-known play, Deep Azure, was commissioned in 2004 by the Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago. It was nominated for a 2006 Jeff Award for Best New Work. Boseman said at the time that Deep Azure was "a fusion and progression of [his] previous plays", which he did not feel fit wholly in the Hip Hop theater genre. The play – about police brutality, a daring subject in 2004, and largely delivered in rhyme – was workshopped at the Apollo Theater in New York. Critic Chris Jones highly praised the work. In 2008, Boseman turned Deep Azure into a screenplay. Michael Greene, who would become his agent, picked it up and contacted Boseman when Tessa Thompson and Omari Hardwick expressed an interest in playing the lead roles, prompting Boseman's move to Los Angeles. He also directed, wrote, and produced the short film Blood Over a Broken Pawn in 2007, which was honored at the 2008 Hollywood Black Film Festival.