Michael B. Jordan got therapy after playing the Black Panther villain Erik Killmonger.
The 38-year-old actor explained he sought professional help after portraying the antagonist in director Ryan Coogler’s 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) blockbuster, as he wanted to find the best way to separate himself from Killmonger’s isolating mindset.
Speaking on CBS Sunday Morning, Jordan said: “After the movie, it kind of stuck with me for a bit.
“[I] Went to therapy, talked about it, 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.
“Acting is a solo journey a lot of times. Auditioning by yourself, practicing 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.”
The Creed star explained he had spent a lot of time “isolated” and “didn’t really speak” to his family in order to prepare for his Black Panther role.
He said: “Erik didn’t really know a lot of love. I think Erik didn’t experience that.
“He had a lot of betrayal, 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, and how was he going to break that cycle.”
Black Panther follows T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) as he returns home to Wakanda to claim the throne after his father’s death and step into his role as king.
When the powerful outsider Erik Killmonger (Jordan) challenges his rule, T’Challa must confront his nation’s past and decide what kind of leader - and hero - he will become.
The movie also starred Letitia Wright as Shuri, Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Winston Duke as M’Baku, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue and Forest Whitaker as Zuri.
Jordan's comments come after Coogler revealed he wanted Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter to face off with T’Challa alongside Erik Killmonger and Ulysses Klaue in Black Panther.
However, the director had to drop those plans after Sony Pictures - who own the movie rights to the Wall-Crawler and his foes - rejected his pitch, as the studio wanted to make their own spin-off flick about the character.
During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Sinners filmmaker said: “When I took that job, Joe Robert Cole, who's my co-writer on both the Panthers, [he] had been working with Marvel and they had a line, so when I showed up, it was like, ‘Hey, we have our villains. Our villains are Klaue and Erik Killmonger.’ That had been decided upon.
“The outline of villains was Klaw and Killmonger, but they weren't sure. They weren't sure. Klaue felt slightly modular to them, and obviously, it was the great Andy Serkis, so I'm hyped to work with him … I'm a big Spider-Man fan, especially Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Kraven is in that. He's also great in the books.
“I was like, ‘Yo, can I have Kraven in the movie?’ They were like, ‘We don't think so, but let us check.’ So, they hit Sony, and Sony was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ They came back to me like, ‘Yo, we can't do it.’ So, I was like, ‘Okay.’”
