With Black Panther firmly planted into the Oscar conversation, leading man Chadwick Boseman took some time out of his hectic schedule to campaign for the billion-dollar blockbuster to get a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

In a recent roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter, Boseman joined fellow actors Mahershala Ali, Timothee Chalamet, Richard E. Grant, Hugh Jackman and Viggo Mortensen to talk about the film’s global impact and the effect it had on him.

Boseman revealed his surprise that Marvel put money behind a movie with an all-black cast and said it allowed him to view the world through a more optimistic lens: “It made me more idealistic about the world and about how things can go, and that that could happen in other places, other production companies, other studios, on other projects,” he said. “That’s aspirational for not just myself but for other people, and not just in film but in other arenas.”

The Marvel frontman also revealed that Black Panther served as his learning seminar on his culture. The film has garnered attention from many due to its depiction of the relationship between Continental Africans and African Americans, colonialism and the multiplicity of Black culture. “As an African-American, I have searched for that my entire life. But I was playing a person who didn’t have to search for it,” Boseman said. “Having that, I value it. There is a certain patriotism to something that has never been lost — it’s ancient.”

Check out the rest of the roundtable below:

 

READ MORE:

What Marvel Underestimated About T’Challa, The Black Panther

‘Black Panther 2’: Ryan Coogler Closes Deal To Write And Direct Sequel