“All My Children” Casting Director Hired Michael B. Jordan When 'Magnificent' Chadwick Boseman Was Fired After 1 Week

All My Children’s longtime casting director is looking back on casting future superstars Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman for the same role on the soap in the early 2000s.

At a Tuesday, Jan. 14, event celebrating the show’s 55th anniversary at New York City’s 92NY, Judy Blye Wilson, who served as All My Children’s casting director from 1991 until the show’s network TV finale in 2011, recalled having to replace Boseman with his future Black Panther costar Jordan.

“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.”

Related: Chadwick Boseman's Iconic Career Brought History to Life: A Look Back at the Actor's Filmography

Boseman, who died of colon cancer at the age of 43 in 2020, would have been in his late 20s when he was hired to play Reggie Porter on the ABC soap, his first-ever TV role.

“[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 from All My Children after voicing 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 told The Wrap in 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.”

Related: Michael B. Jordan Says He Struggles with 'Loneliness,' Goes 'Back and Forth' on Wanting a Relationship

In a September 2020 remembrance for The Hollywood Reporter following the actor’s death, Boseman’s longtime agent Michael Greene wrote that Boseman had objected to the fact that his All My Children character’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 with The 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.

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