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Black Panther has made history in film this year, becoming the first superhero movie to receive a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Last week, the Marvel film also won Outstanding Performance by a Cast at the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as collection of other awards across the season. Proving to stand up against the big guns in the industry, Black Panther didn’t come without a cost as Michael B Jordan has now revealed.
Appearing at a Oprah Winfrey Super Soul Conversation yesterday, the 31-year-old actor spoke on how playing villain ‘Erik Killmonger’ took a very real mental toll, purposely distancing himself from others. The CNN reported:
“I spent a lot of time alone,” Jordan told Winfrey. “I figured Erik [Killmonger], his childhood growing up was pretty lonely. He didn’t have a lot of people he could talk to about this place called Wakanda that didn’t exist.”
Tapping into deep “pain and rage” that Killmonger represents by being black in today’s America, Jordan also admitted he didn’t have an exit strategy after filming. “Just being in that kind of mind state … it caught up with me,” Jordan said. “Readjusting to people caring about me, getting that love that I shut out,” he continued. “I shut out love, I didn’t want love. I wanted to be in this lonely place as long as I could.”
And so, Jordan sought out professional help despite ongoing criticism surrounding men receiving mental health treatment.
“Your mind is so powerful. Your mind will get your body past a threshold that it would have given up on way before,” Jordan said. “Honestly, therapy, just talking to somebody just helped me out a lot. As a man you get a lot of slack for it. … I don’t really subscribe to that. Everyone needs to unpack and talk.”
