Creed and Sinners star Michael B. Jordan first played Erik Killmonger in 2018’s Black Panther, and still ranks among the MCU’s best villains. He later returned for a brief cameo in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and transformed into “Infinity Killmonger” in Marvel Animation’s What If…?<\/p>\n
Jordan went to some dark places as Killmonger in that first\u00a0Ryan Coogler-directed movie, and it turns out that immersing himself in the role left a lasting impact on the actor.<\/p>\n
“After the movie, it kind of stuck with me for a bit,”<\/strong> Jordan says in the video below. “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\u2019s no blueprint to this.”<\/strong><\/p>\n He added, “Acting is a solo journey a lot of times. Auditioning by yourself, practising by yourself. There\u2019s 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.’\u00a0You know, talking is really important.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Reflecting on how he prepared for the role, Jordan admitted\u00a0that he “isolated”<\/strong> himself and “didn’t\u00a0really speak”<\/strong> to his family. Expanding on how that helped, he said, “Erik didn\u2019t really know a lot of love. I think Erik didn\u2019t experience that. He had a lot of betrayal, a lot of failed systems around him that shaped him and his anger and his frustration.”<\/strong><\/p>\n “And looking at history and how it would seem to always repeat itself, and how was he going to break that cycle,”<\/strong> Jordan concluded.<\/p>\n There was speculation that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever might reveal that T’Challa’s cousin was still alive before making him\u00a0the next Black Panther. Instead, he appeared before Shuri in the\u00a0Ancestral Plane, encouraging her to embark on a mission of revenge against Namor.<\/p>\n