There is an incredible level of talent featured in this year’s Best Actor category at the Academy Awards. Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, Wagner Moura, and Michael B. Jordan each delivered some of the best performances of their careers in their respective nominated films, and it’s tricky to predict who will walk away from the award ceremony next month with a trophy. There are strong arguments to be made for each of them – in Jordan’s case specifically, we must discuss the wild level of thought and care that he put in differentiating his twin roles in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.
Jordan has been doing a lot of press during awards season talking about his career – from discussing the moment he became passionate about acting to his perspective on the weirdest thing about the entertainment business – but fellow Oscar nominee Wunmi Mosaku has also been talking up his impressiveness of late, and she offered some amazing revelations during a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Discussing his separate approaches for his performances as brothers Smoke and Stack in Sinners, the actress explained that her co-star went as far as to hold his face differently depending on who he was playing. Said Mosaku,
Stack has dimples and Smoke doesn’t, and that isn’t makeup. That is literally how Michael held his face. Like, his eyebrows are more up and out.
That’s just wild. There are more overt efforts in the movie to help differentiate between the identical protagonists (most notably, Smoke wears a blue newsboy flat cap and shirt while Stack dons a red fedora with a matching tie and pocket square), but this level of effort is mind-boggling and wonderfully illustrative of Michael B. Jordan’s dedication as an actor.
And the list of differences doesn’t stop at facial muscle control or hat/color choices either. Further discussing the way her co-star would disappear into his respective roles, Mosaku explained that she always had a clear idea of who she was seeing from the actor at any given moment, and there were even more subtle choices that he made – from the way he walked to the size of his shoes. She explained,
I don’t know how he did it, because for me, it was seamless. I was never confused. His whole energy was different when he was Stack and when he was Smoke. Like, his cadence of how he walked was different. But I just found out on all of this press tour, he wore different shoes, like different size shoes, so when he was Stack he wore tighter shoes, ‘cause it kept him light around his feet. And when he was Smoke, he wore bigger than his natural size so that he kind of felt more grounded.
Will that special effort, the double duty, and his remarkable performance lead Michael B. Jordan to winning his first Academy Award? We’re now just a little over a couple weeks away from finding out, as the Oscars will take place on Sunday March 15.
