Chadwick Boseman and Jessica Walter get posthumous Emmy nominations for voiceover work

Death is not the end when it comes to the Emmy Awards, and that's especially true for animated shows, which can take years to produce. The late actors Chadwick Boseman and Jessica Walter both earned posthumous Emmy nominations for their voiceover work in two different animated shows.

Boseman's nomination came for playing his most iconic role, Marvel superhero Black Panther, a.k.a T'Challa. Though usually a live-action character, Boseman's T'Challa transitioned to animation for the Disney+ series What If…?. The anthology imagines the Marvel universe taking different plot paths than previously seen, and the second episode hypothesized a young T'Challa being taken to outer space by the Ravagers and eventually becoming Star-Lord in place of Chris Pratt's Peter Quill. The episode hit Disney+ almost a full year after Boseman's death from colon cancer in August 2020, and has now earned him his first-ever Emmy nomination.

Marvel Studios; Everett Collection Chadwick Boseman ('What If...?') and Jessica Walter ('Archer') both earned posthumous Emmy nominations this year for voiceover owrk.

Boseman wasn't the only MCU actor to reprise his role for What If...? (Benedict Cumberbatch played Doctor Strange in an episode that was nominated for Outstanding Animated Program), and he wasn't the only What If...? actor to earn a nomination in this category. Jeffrey Wright, who voiced the all-seeing being Uatu the Watcher, was nominated for the season 1 finale in which he actually played a role in the plot, as opposed to just narrating.

Walter, who died in Match 2021, earned a nomination for her work on Archer for the second year in a row. Her character Malory Archer, a harsh spymaster and the highly-critical mother of the show's super-spy protagonist, was explicitly based on Walter's iconic performance as Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development. The 2021 season of Archer was the last to feature Walter's voiceover work, and the season finale was dedicated to her. Before these two back-to-back Archer nominations, Walter won an Emmy for starring in the TV miniseries Amy Prentiss back in 1975.

Boseman and Walter's competition in the category includes Wright, F. Murray Abraham (Moon Knight), Julie Andrews (Bridgerton), Stanley Tucci (Central Park), and two-time reigning champion Maya Rudolph (Big Mouth).

The Emmy Awards will air Monday, Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC, and will be available to stream live and on demand on Peacock.

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV.

Related content:

• Marvel's What If…? team previews Chadwick Boseman's final MCU appearance as T'Challa

• How Archer said goodbye to Jessica Walter on the show's season finale

• Emmy nominations 2022: See the full list