Photo Credit: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for THR
We LOVE a man who takes care of his mental health!
Michael B Jordan sat down with Oprah Winfrey during a taping of her Super Soul Conversations to talk about needing therapy after Black Panther. Jordan says his role as Erik Killmonger left him feeling a little emotionally drained. As a result, he chose to seek professional help and begin seeing a therapist, to help him get back to his normal self after the cameras shut off.
“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.” he explains. He then goes into detail about how he immersed himself in the role of Killmonger, and adds that to get into character, he purposely distanced himself from others.
“I figured Erik, 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.” Isolation was one tool he used to better understand this character, the other was his personal experiences as a “black and brown man here in America.”
After filming was over Jordan says he a hard time getting out of that mindset and his role had residual effects when it came to reconnecting with people. “Readjusting to people caring about me, getting that love that I shut out,” Jordan shared. “I shut out love, I didn’t want love. I wanted to be in this lonely place as long as I could.”
There have also been rumors swirling that MBJ may reprise his role as Killmonger in Black Panther 2, though we saw his character “die” in the first movie. If you’ve seen any Marvel movie, you know anything is possible. As much as we may all want to see that happen..we have to ask the more important question. Could his characters return take him back that dark place he just escaped from? We hope not, because we sure the ladies, AND gentleman want to see more shirtless Mike in the next film *fingers crossed*!
Take a look at this clip of his sit down with Oprah below and make sure to watch their full primetime special on Saturday, February 16, at 8/7c—only on OWN.
