Michael B. Jordan sought mental health treatment to "decompress" from his role as Erik Killmonger in the 2018 Marvel blockbuster Black Panther.
The Sinners star was a recent guest on CBS Sunday Morning, where he shared around the fifteen-minute mark that playing Killmonger briefly "stuck" with him after filming wrapped.
"Went to therapy, talked about it, found a way to kind of just decompress," Jordan explained. "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.”
In the Ryan Coogler-directed movie, Killmonger was the archnemesis of the titular character/King T'Challa, played by the late Chadwick Boseman. Killmonger, a former Navy SEAL, entered the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda to avenge the death of his father and take the throne from King T'Challa.
"Acting is a solo journey a lot of times. Auditioning by yourself, practicing by yourself," Jordan continued. "There’s a lot of preparation and the experience, the journey. So learning as I went, I [realized] that, 'Oh man, I still got a little something on me I need to get off.' Talking is really important."
The entertainer said it "spiraled into a bigger discussion" of therapy being "necessary" for others, especially men.
"That's something that not ashamed of at all and very and very proud of and definitely helped me in throughout the years and to this day of trying to be a good communicator and a well-rounded person inside and out," he concluded.
Elsewhere, Jordan said he channelled Killmonger's "anger" and "frustration" to bring the character to life. This left the actor "isolated" from his family, whom he "didn't really speak" to while preparing for the film. The actor also expressed that he wished to have had "more time" with Boseman, who died in August 2020 after a private cancer battle.
