Tom Felton says Chadwick Boseman ‘delightfully’ beat him up in movie scene

Tom Felton once went toe-to-toe with Black Panther himself.

The Harry Potter alum recently recalled working with Chadwick Boseman in their 2016 revenge thriller, Message From the King — and taking quite a licking for one of its more intense scenes.

“Crikey, that was a few years back,” the actor behind Draco Malfoy said in a new interview with The Guardian. “Chadwick was such a professional, and definitely cut from a different cloth.”

In the film, Boseman portrayed Jacob King, a South African man who travels to Los Angeles to avenge his estranged sister’s death. At one point, Jacob violently interrogates a drug dealer (Felton) who’d been affiliated with her.

“The ferocity with which Chadwick threw me into a car!” Felton recalled of shooting the scene. “There was very little acting needed, because he delightfully beat the s— out of me.”

Felton also compared Boseman to another Black Panther actor, whom Felton worked with during a different sci-fi action movie. “He reminded me of Andy Serkis, who was a real gentleman when we were doing Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” he said. However, he added, “(Serkis) would turn into a whole different beast the moment they said ‘action’ and drag me across the floor as Caesar the ape.”

Directed by Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz, Message From the King also starred Luke Evans, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, and Alfred Molina. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016 and was released on Netflix the following year.

Felton recently returned to the world of Harry Potter in the Broadway play Harry Potter and the Cursed Childin which he reprises his movie role as Draco.

Inspired by his return as Harry’s sneering schoolyard foe, one Guardian reader asked Felton to name his favorite fictional non-Draco bully. “I have so much compassion for Draco, knowing that he is the result of piss-poor parenting on his father’s side,” he said. “As a lifelong fan of The SimpsonsI’m going to have to say my favorite is Nelson Muntz.”

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Elsewhere in the Guardian Q&A, Felton offered a surprising response when asked what TV series he’d like to join as a new cast member. “I love the idea of Mr. Beanbecause he’s so universally respected and understood because there’s no language,” Felton said. “I can only imagine how brief the scripts must have looked. I’m introducing some of my American colleagues to the joys of English sitcoms.”