Michael B Jordan felt Chadwick Boseman with him on the set of Sinners.
Michael’s Black Panther co-star Chadwick, 43, passed away in 2020 following a secret battle with cancer and Michael revealed he and director Ryan Coogler sought inspiration from their late friend when working on the Oscar-nominated 2025 movie Sinners.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, when speaking during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Outstanding Performer of the Year Award tribute, Michael said: “I loved that guy so much, and it saddens me every time I think about it that I won’t get a chance to work with him again.”
Michael – who earned his first-ever Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his dual role as twin brothers (Smoke and Stack) in Coogler's vampire epic Sinners - went on to share how he and Black Panther director Coogler, 39, channelled Boseman on the Sinners set.
He said: “It was early in the shoot - maybe the first two weeks - and it was the first day that I had to go between both twins, going back and forth, and we were trying to figure out who goes first, Smoke or Stack.
“I was having a lot of conversations in-between, and I dropped my accent and it was full Mike talking for a second. And then I tried to get back into the mindset of one of the twins, and it took me a little bit longer to get back into character than I would have liked.
“I remember me and Coogs were having a sidebar conversation between one of the setups, and he was like - not these words verbatim, but along the lines of - ‘What would Chad do?’ And I kind of looked at him for a second and was like, ‘Alright, say no more.’ I knew exactly what he meant. And that propelled and pushed me, gave me another gear to go to. So yeah, Chadwick was with me. He’s always with me.”
Jordan and Coogler have had a prolific partnership, starting with 2013’s Fruitvale Station and including the Creed franchise and Michael insisted there will be a Creed IV.
He told the audience: “There’s definitely gonna be a Creed IV, for sure.”
