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Gurira said she hired her own swimming coach for “Wakanda Forever” and unlearned some of the improper techniques she had picked up as a teen, but when her character goes into the water, she’s still in peril from the undersea army led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta). You might think Namor would be more at home in the water than Okoye, but as we previously reported, Huerta secured the part of “Marvel’s Aquaman,” as it were, despite being unable to swim.
Gurira brought this up in her interview and used it to make a larger point about how swimming, a skill some might take for granted, isn’t as much of a given for people of color. As she explained:
“People of color sometimes and swimming, we don’t often get that life skill, and it is something that actually I’ve gotten kind of passionate about, because I found a stat. Simone Manuel — who is our first Black actual gold medalist from the United States out of Stanford — I found a stat through her organization that Black children are five times more likely to die from drowning. So that really — that really got me. And so I’m all in it right now, passionately trying to figure out how to bring more awareness around us in terms of that stuff. And I hope the movie encourages folks to go out and, you know, learn how to do some backstroke and breaststroke.”
Speaking from personal experience, it’s easy to forget how to swim even as an adult if you go enough years without doing it. Is it too late for Marvel to reframe Okoye’s Disney+ series as an educational program? “Learn to Swim with Okoye.”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is in theaters now.
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