EBONY October cover star Chadwick Boseman is no stranger to playing real-life superheroes. From funk icon James Brown to baseball legend Jackie Robinson, the talented actor isn’t afraid to honor prominent figures by taking on their very being.

Boseman does just that in new film Marshall, but almost turned down the opportunity for fear of being locked in a biopic box, according to Essence.

“I was looking for a different type of movie, and I didn’t think I looked like him,” he says. “But then [director] Reginald Hudlin sold me on the fact that we’d be doing a courtroom drama…in a way that had mystery and suspense.”

He also took into consideration that both he and the supreme court justice attended Howard University, saying “I knew what that place smelled like, what it felt like, so there’s a certain understanding of who I thought he was just from that.”

Boseman is also gearing up for the release of the highly-anticipated superhero flick Black Panther, co-starring  Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis. Check out the official trailer below.

Marshall is in theaters now and Black Panther arrives Feb 16th of next year.