Winston Duke Reveals He Improvised Hilarious Line in Black Panther

Winston Duke confirmed that one of the funniest lines in Black Panther was one that he made up, completely off the cuff.

This makes it even more impressive that Angela Bassett managed to hold it together after Duke shot off his iconic insult to Danai Gurira in the movie: “You bald-headed demon.”

We spoke to the actor on the red carpet after Marvel’s Hall H Panel at San Diego Comic Con 2026, where he couldn’t help but laugh after our host Jeffrey Vega brought it up.

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“It was completely improvised,” he admitted. “I love playing M’Baku. M’Baku is just a very free guy, who is very honest and true to his attachments and his culture. I borrowed a lot from Nigerian Igbo culture. I just felt like that’s something someone of that tradition would do and say in that moment. It was something meaningful, but didn’t have a lot of consequence — which, at the end of the day, it was a family squabble. The moment could support that, and I felt like it was perfect, and Ryan let me do it.”

Black Panther III was one of the big reveals that night, as was M’Baku’s apparent involvement in Avengers: Doomsday.

Duke shared his reaction to David Jonsson getting cast as the next Black Panther, telling us, “I had a very similar reaction to the audience. It was my first time meeting him today. I just want to extend to him the same kind of grace that was extended to me. Black Panther was my very first movie, I was welcomed into a cohort of people who just wnated to make something great. It was a safe space to be daring, a safe space to try things, and a safe place to add my personal interpretation. I told him, ‘We all just want you to win and we can’t wait to work with you.'”

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