Michael B Jordan, who was last seen in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, has opened up about paying a therapist a visit after essaying the antagonist in the filmmaker's 2018 Marvel film, Black Panther.
The actor, who played Erik Killmonger opposite Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther, spoke about the effect fully immersing himself in the character had on him in a conversation with CBS Sunday Morning.
He said, “After the movie, it kind of stuck with me for a bit. Went to therapy, talked about it, and found a way to kind of just decompress. And I think at that point, I was still learning that I needed to decompress from a character. You know, there’s no blueprint to this.”
Jordan further reveals that it was in retrospect that he realised the need for therapy to disassociate from the character. “Acting is a solo journey a lot of times. Auditioning by yourself, practising by yourself. There’s a lot of preparation and the experience and the journey. So learning as I went, I [realised] that, ‘Oh man, I still got a little something on me I need to get off.' You know, talking is really important," he shared.
The impact began when he started preparing for the role by isolating himself and not speaking much with his family in order to be focused. “Erik didn’t really know a lot of love. I think Erik didn’t experience that,” Jordan explained. “He had a lot of betrayal and a lot of failed systems around him that shaped him and his anger and his frustration. And looking at history and how it would seem to always repeat itself, how was he going to break that cycle?”
The Oscar-winning film Black Panther tells the story of T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the rightful king of the technologically advanced nation of Wakanda, as he navigates his new role and confronts a threat from his country's past. The film's global success, grossing $1.349 billion, paved the way for the sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2022.