Michael B. Jordan has revealed that he sought professional help after playing the villain in Black Panther; as the role took a toll on his mental health.
“I went to therapy, I started talking to people, starting unpacking a little bit,” he shared Tuesday in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey at the taping of her SuperSoul Conversations TV special.
“I was by myself, isolating myself,” Jordan said when Winfrey asked where he went to “get all that nastiness” to play the Marvel villain Killmonger.
“I spent a lot of time alone,” Jordan said. “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.”
Jordan explained how he wanted to highlight the essence of what Killmonger represents in the blockbuster action film.
“Of course it’s an extreme, exaggerated version of the African diaspora from the African-American perspective, so to be able to take that kind of pain and rage and all those emotions that Erik kind of represents from being Black and brown here in America … that was something I didn’t take lightly,” he said.
“I didn’t have a process,” for being Killmonger, Jordan added, “I just did whatever I felt I needed to do or whatever I felt was right in the moment every step of the way.”
However, “I didn’t have an escape plan, either,” he confessed.
“When it was all over, I think just being in that kind of mind state … it caught up with me,” Jordan said.
When filming wrapped, Jordan says it was difficult to shake the character.
“It was a little tough for me at first,” 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.”
He admits that seeing a therapist “helped me out a lot.”
“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.”
During their sit-down, Oprah also asked the 31-year-old actor about rumors that he could be playing Superman.
“I think just to be in this conversation, it’s flattering and very humbling,” he said, adding: “Just being under that microscope of being picked apart and compared to so many different versions of Superman, I would rather do something original.”
Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations airs Feb. 16 at 8 EST/PST on OWN.
WATCH:
HEAD BACK TO THE BLACKAMERICAWEB.COM HOMEPAGE
