Cover Story: Michael B. Jordan’s Technicolor Dreams (2024)

It’s right around the time I’m prattling on about racial diversity inHollywood that Michael B. Jordan, the movie star, floors the gas pedaland sends his blade-like sports car ripping down the Pacific CoastHighway, a fast-forward jolt that turns Malibu into a kinetic blur ofpink and blue.

“Oh Jesus Christ!” I cry out.

I grip the armrest and see terrible visions of us slicing a beach bum inhalf as he accidentally stumbles into the road or exploding into thatwhite van that looks to be edging unexpectedly into our lane.

“I got you,” Jordan assures over the engine roar.

When he finally slows—imagine the Millennium Falcon afterhyperspace—he turns to me and flashes that winning Michael B. Jordansmile, a dazzling display of superstar teeth that sends 7.3 millionInstagram followers into squeals of delight (“YOU’RE SO HOTTT,BABY!!!”). A nervous laugh catches in my throat. A minute later, Jordandoes it again.

“We’re at a hundred right now,” he mentions, cutting left to avoid acar. “110.”

Me: “Oh sh*t.”

His oversize sports jersey says “Fear of God” on it.

It’s quite a rush, but for a split-second it does cross my mind thatJordan is unnecessarily tempting fate. What if we kill somebody? What ifwe’re pulled over for reckless driving? A black man doing—let’s see,127 m.p.h.—at four in the afternoon? In lily-white Malibu?

More is being risked here than our necks, something that Michael BakariJordan, of all people, is equipped to understand. Jordan was the star ofFruitvale Station, the 2013 breakout indie hit directed by Ryan Coogler,in which Jordan played Oscar Grant, the real-life black youth gunneddown by a transit cop in 2009 for a lot less than speeding. Jordanhimself says that, a few years before, he was racially profiled, stoppedfor alleged speeding, and got searched, handcuffed, and detained onSouth La Brea Avenue. He informed the officer he was late for a flightat LAX. “I think I mighta said something slick,” says Jordan. “‘Cause it was the end of the month, I was like, ‘Oh, you guys trying tomeet a quota.’ I said something like that. That probably didn’t help meat all.”

By the time the cop let him off—without a ticket—Jordan had missedhis flight. At the time, he was starring in Red Tails, the George Lucasmovie about black fighter pilots.

When Jordan finally gears down, we look at each other and laugh. A lotjust happened. And then it dawns on me: in rocketing down the PacificCoast Highway and freaking out the white writer from Vanity Fair,Michael B. Jordan had just turned a theoretical conversation about raceinto a palpable theater that requires no words at all.

Jordan has declared that he wants to advance the cultural aims of blackpeople on film. He also wants to become a matinee idol on par withLeonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon, which means he wants the ultimate kindof racial equity—to be a movie star, full stop. “I’m first andforemost a black man, for sure, but what I’m trying to do, and what I’mtrying to represent and build, is universal,” he says.

“We live in the times where everything is based around race,” he says.“And for me, it’s like, I get it, I understand. It just makeseverything so loaded. When the way to do it is to Trojan-horse it, sothen people look up, and say, ‘Oh wow, what happened? I didn’t evenrealize that.’ ”

On the surface, Jordan’s two goals might seem incompatible—to be bothblack and not black. But Jordan’s biggest films to date, both directedby 32-year-old Coogler, have cannily achieved a parity between racialadvancement and Hollywood entertainment—Creed, which flipped thescript on Rocky by putting a black boxing hero at the top of atraditionally white franchise; and Black Panther, which embedded analmost entirely black cast and Afrocentric themes in a tableau of Marvelcomic superheroics.

This Sunday afternoon in Malibu, on a trip to a burger joint up thecoast, perhaps the real point is the car, an Acura NSX—a stunningwhite objet d’art with a low, sleek sci-fi design (I couldn’t figure outhow to open the door) and a window in back for viewing the turbo engine.The nearly $160,000 machine is part of an endorsem*nt deal Jordan cutwith Acura—an arrangement orchestrated by Phillip Sun, his agent atWilliam Morris Endeavor, after the first Creed movie, in 2015, whereinJordan played Adonis, the illegitimate son of boxer Apollo Creed, andSylvester Stallone played the aging Rocky Balboa. The car is a dreamcome true for a kid from Newark who used to race illegally with friendsin high school and obsess over this very model while his devoted andpolitically aware parents toiled in a small catering business whileferrying him to modeling gigs and plotting his future in a hostileworld.

Built on this hard-won foundation, Jordan is aiming for breathtakingheights. His ambition is to be not only an actor, but a one-man moviestudio whose every move has a dollar sign attached to it and for whomnothing is left to chance. With multi-million-dollar endorsem*nt deals,his own production company, and a new marketing-and-consulting start-upin the works, he’s applying the old Jay-Z adage—“I’m not abusinessman / I am a business, man”—to the business of moviemaking.“He knows exactly what he is, which is a commodity,” says TessaThompson, his co-star in Creed II, the new sequel. “Then be owner ofit, really and truly.”

It’s a lot of pressure on a 31-year-old whose journey isn’t just hisown. An entire community is depending on this particular commodity—hisparents and siblings and an ever growing entourage of advisers, friends,and consultants, not to mention the black actors, writers, and directorscheering his success because it is theirs as well. His agent is castinghim as the Tom Cruise of his generation. His publicists are campaigningfor an Oscar for his role in Black Panther. He could go all the way orthe whole thing could blow up—and not only at 127 miles an hour.

The first time I see Michael B. Jordan he’s playing a demonstration gameof air hockey in a gigantic arcade in a Hollywood mall. Jordan hosts ayearly fund-raiser called the MBJAM, selling tickets to fans andbringing in celebrity friends to draw attention to lupus, the chronicautoimmune disease his mother, Donna, suffers from. His entire innercircle is here—high-school friends and movie-industry pals, his agent,his agent’s assistant, his high-powered publicist, his publicist’sassistant, his personal assistant, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles,and, of course, his parents. Jordan, in an olive-green satin bomberjacket and designer sweats, does a photo shoot for Coach, his latestendorsem*nt deal, and an interview with Extra, with his mother byhis side. Jamie Foxx shows up for the photo splash. Lena Waithe gives aninterview. It’s a family affair.

When Jordan goes home, his family goes with him—to Sherman Oaks, wherehis parents and younger brother Khalid, a Howard University grad whoworks in development at Warner Horizon Television, live with him in amansion he purchased in 2016. In part, it’s to care for his mother, butalso because his parents remain deeply engaged in his career and life.When he holds business meetings at the house, his father will come inwith a plate of sandwiches. There are portraits of Martin Luther King,Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey on the walls, and bookshelves filled withblack history and literature, most of it belonging to his father. Hismother’s artwork—large multicolored Impressionistic paintings—hangon the wall.

A sweetly introverted geek who obsessed over anime comic books, sci-fifilms, and the New York Knicks, Jordan modeled for Kmart and Toys “R”Us before landing a bit role in the Cosby Show revival in 2000. Jordan’smain memory of Bill Cosby is the aging star asking him to practicebrushing his hair for a scene. Cosby didn’t let him stop brushing for anentire afternoon, until Jordan’s scalp was raw and burning. Needless tosay, it gave Jordan a dim view of acting. As Jordan summed up hisattitude in an early interview: “f*ck that.”

Jordan’s first big role was as Wallace on HBO’s The Wire, a child gangmember who is killed by an older friend after he witnesses a murder andbecomes a liability to his crew, the Barksdale Organization. Jordan was15 years old, doe-eyed, cornrows in his hair, with a wounded glower thatcould break unexpectedly into a room-altering smile. His mother weptwhen she watched the death scene. Jordan was hardly an actor, not even aschool play to his name, but his unformed screen presence was exactlywhat writer-producer David Simon was after. Veteran actors like AndreRoyo, who played the street junkie Bubbles, took Jordan under theirwing, showing him, for instance, how to act like he was high on drugs.“He came to me, little young kid, but just eager to learn, with like,‘Hey Dre, you mind giving me some pointers? You think you can help meout with this?’ And I was kind of laughing to myself like, ‘I hope he’sready.’ ”

The Wire was not an immediate hit, but Jordan’s ambitions were ignitedby the attention. Maybe he could be the next Will Smith. He took out hiscornrows and declared that he was through being typecast. His first filmrole, a year before The Wire, had been as a Chicago street urchin namedJamal in Hardball, a feel-good comedy-drama about a group of hard-knocksblack kids converted into a baseball team by a white coach, played byKeanu Reeves. “With the braids out, I should have more options,”Jordan said at the time. “I’m being thrown urban roles right now, but Idon’t plan on doing these my whole life.”

Soon after he was typecast again, as Reggie, a troubled teen in the ABCsoap opera All My Children, what he later called “a f*ckingstereotypical black role.” But it did give him a four-year contract andmore training as an actor, not to mention an income.

When Jordan’s role in All My Children wrapped, in 2006, he was 19 andhad decided to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career. A family friend,Sterling “Steelo” Brim, whom Jordan met on the set of Hardball, joinedhim, and the two scratched for work. Jordan would spend the next fewyears trying to find roles that suited his ambitions, but Hollywood atthat point had precious little bandwidth for rising black superstars.

“I remember when I first came to L.A., and me and my mom, we went toall these agencies trying to get representation and they passed onme—WME passed on me, CAA passed on me, Gersh, all these guys f*ckingpassed on me,” says Jordan. He says it gave him a “healthy chip” onhis shoulder. (So did his name, which was never going to be his alone.)Jordan was a rent check away from packing it in when he ran into AndreRoyo at a pool party in Los Angeles, hosted by The Wire director AnthonyHemingway. “He was stressed out,” recounts Royo, 50. “He was like,‘Yo, I’m not working enough, sh*t is crazy, I think I’m going to go backto New York.’ And he was really on some ‘boo-hoo’sh*t. And I was like,‘Yo dog, are you kidding me right now? You in your early 20s and you’rearound motherf*ckers trying to feed families who ain’t working. Snap outof it.’ ”

Jordan’s career was going sideways when producer Peter Berg cast him asquarterback Vince Howard in NBC’s Friday Night Lights. Jordan spent twoseasons as the hard-luck troublemaker who overcomes his demons to helpwin the championship, throwing a Hail Mary pass in the final play. Itwas Jordan’s most complex and richly drawn role to date, and his co*ckedeyebrow, easy smile, and rangy sex appeal seemed to pop on the screen.Friday Night Lights quickly became his calling card, leading to a roleas a benevolent teenager named Alex for two seasons of Parenthood, onNBC; as Steve in the teenage sci-fi thriller Chronicle, directed by JoshTrank; and, crucially, a role in Red Tails, the George Lucas-producedhistorical account of the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, a squadron ofAfrican-American fighter pilots. Jordan was disappointed that his bestscene was cut from Red Tails, and the movie was a commercial andcritical flop, but Jordan stood out in a cast of top black actors,including Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard, and it led to offers ofroles in potential blockbuster franchises, including Fantastic Four.Jordan took the Fantastic Four role as the Human Torch—a controversialcasting decision because the Human Torch was originally a whitecharacter (to quell fan uproar, Jordan published a personal essayentitled, “Why I’m Torching the Color Line”). The movie, also directedby Josh Trank, seemed like Jordan’s ticket to the big time, but it wasdestined to flop badly, nearly damaging Jordan’s career. BeforeFantastic Four even hit theaters, however, two fateful events wouldchange everything for Jordan: On the advice of his agent, he had taken ameeting at Starbucks with a hugely ambitious but untested new directornamed Ryan Coogler, who had ideas for a gritty indie film calledFruitvale Station and a blue-sky project to revive the Rocky franchisewith a black leading man. And just as Fruitvale emerged, in 2013, aself-styled vigilante named George Zimmerman was found innocent in thekilling of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in Florida, sparking theBlack Lives Matter movement.

Fruitvale Station is about the last 24 hours in the life of Oscar Grant,a 22-year-old from Oakland who was senselessly shot by a transit cop ona train platform on New Year’s Day in 2009. Before Jordan filmed thefinal scene, at Fruitvale Station in the BART subway system in SanFrancisco, Coogler led the cast and crew in a group prayer while Jordanlay on the exact same spot where Grant died. “The bullet mark was stillthere,” Jordan recalls. “I was right on top of it, exactly where hewas at.”

Fruitvale was a powerful piece of political art, perfectly pitched toits moment. Jordan’s Method acting became legend: He moved to Oaklandone month before shooting to retrace Grant’s steps and spend time withGrant’s family and friends, keeping detailed notebooks to help him fullyrealize his character and immersing himself to the point where somepeople didn’t know where “Oscar Grant” ended and Jordan began.

When Coogler met Jordan, the two bonded instantly, as millennials wholoved Jay-Z and the Brazilian indie film City of God, but also as youngmen from predominantly black cities, Oakland and Newark, situated acrossbodies of water from major metropolises. “You get inspired, thepossibilities, the dreams, what opportunities are over there,” saysJordan. “It gives you this hunger to get across the water, across thebridge, across the tunnel, to the other place.”

Coogler, the son of a community organizer and a probation officer, hadspent a year and a half trying to persuade Sylvester Stallone to entrusthim with the Rocky franchise and extend the six-movie story line withthe tale of Adonis Creed, the illegitimate son of Apollo, Rocky’sonetime nemesis and later best friend, who died in Rocky IV at the handsof a Russian combatant played by Dolph Lundgren. It was Stallone’s wife,Jennifer, who finally convinced her husband to do it. Preparing forCreed required Jordan to live like a monk, training six days a week tochisel his body into that of a credible middleweight boxer. His absbecame part of his newfound profile as an actor, as did a newly chargedidea of black political consciousness. He dressed up like Malcolm X fora GQ fashion spread.

Fruitvale and Creed forged the relationship between Coogler and Jordan,and the two were now viewed as a package. With Black Panther, MarvelStudios gave Coogler the firepower to shatter the preconceptions of whata “black” film could do—a $200 million budget (by contrast,Fruitvale Station cost $900,000). Coogler co-wrote the screenplay,including the final scene in which Jordan, as Killmonger, is felled by asword and spends his dying moments—lips quivering, eyes welling withtears—gazing out over the Afro-futuristic utopia of Wakanda,declaring, “It’s beautiful.” In a nod to black history that is also apowerful slice of cinematic melodrama, Killmonger asks King T’Challa(Black Panther) to “bury me in the ocean, with my ancestors that jumpedfrom the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage.”

The film has grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.

Last spring, at the Met Gala in New York, Michael B. Jordan arrived in aninja-style pin-striped suit with a black belt hanging down like apanther tail, created by the first-ever black men’s-wear designer atLouis Vuitton, Virgil Abloh. Amid the red-carpet flashbulbs andavant-garde couture, the new faces of a black renaissance found oneanother in the crowd and posed for an impromptu group photograph, withJordan standing among Janelle Monáe, Daniel Kaluuya, Tessa Thompson,Lena Waithe, John Boyega, Cynthia Erivo, Chadwick Boseman, and LetitiaWright. In a year when the top movie was Black Panther; the best show ontelevision, Atlanta, was about characters orbiting a black hip-hopartist; and a real-life hip-hop artist, Kendrick Lamar, won the PulitzerPrize, the picture felt like a gate-crashing and a cultural watershed.Afterward, the group converged at the Up&Down club, in downtownManhattan, and marveled at their moment. Jordan “looked at me and hewas like, ‘We got to keep going. We have to keep going,’ ” recountsLena Waithe, the creator of Showtime’s The Chi. “I said, ‘I don’t gotno plans of stopping.’ ”

After the gala, Jordan posted a picture of himself on Instagram standingnext to Donald Glover, the creator and star of Atlanta, with the caption“Synergy . . .” “Me and Donald, we got some things brewing also,”Jordan tells me. “Timing is right, you know?”

Steven Caple Jr., the director of Jordan’s next film, Creed II, callsthis moment of black solidarity in Hollywood a “movement.” During thefilming last March, Jordan and Caple often talked about black historicalfigures whose stories might make a great movie or TV series, like FredHampton, the Black Panther who was murdered in his apartment in 1969, orMansa Musa, a Malian historical figure of the 14th century known to manyAfrican-Americans but virtually unknown to white people. Musa wasreputedly one of the richest men in the world. “When people look atblack people it’s hard for them to think beyond slavery,” says Caple.

“We don’t have any mythology, black mythology, or folklore,” Jordanexplains to me as we cruise past billboards for Atlanta and HBO’sBallers in West Hollywood. DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One” is on the carstereo, and I notice Jordan’s iPhone alias is “Bruce Leroy,” the blackmartial-arts hero of the 1985 film The Last Dragon. “Creating our ownmythology is very important because it helps dream,” says Jordan. “Youhelp people dream.”

While promoting Fantastic Four, Jordan came out of the box with arough-hewn ghetto biography that could have been a backstory from TheWire. “I’m from north New Jersey, bro,” he told GQ. “I come fromnothing. I come from sleeping in the kitchen with my family with theoven open to keep us warm during winter, you know?”

With the GQ reporter tagging along, Jordan becomes incensed when amaître d’ at a restaurant makes him wait too long for a table, thensticks gum under the table to avenge the perceived racial slight, andthen gets drunk on tequila co*cktails. “My home, growing up,” he saidof his neighborhood in Newark, “is hood as f*ck.”

His mother, Donna, was none too pleased. “It was so crass,” she saysnow. “A little embellished—actor’s license.”

“The hood was the hood,” she says, sighing. “Yes, when we got up inthe morning, there was possibly crack vials and condoms on the street.The hood was around us and it was the hood, but our experience wasdifferent.”

Jordan says his parents didn’t witness everything he did—getting heldup at gunpoint or seeing a crime scene, which was “normal” for Newark,he says—but he regrets his early braggadocio and chalks it up towounded pride. In truth, Jordan was mostly shielded from the blunt endof Newark because his parents worked for years to build their ownversion of Wakanda out of the dregs of urban decay.

Jordan’s parents thought deeply about the optimal strategy forAfrican-Americans to survive and prosper on a field that was heavilytilted against them. Jordan was born during the crack epidemic of thelate 1980s, when George H. W. Bush was campaigning for president partlyby inciting racist fears with the infamous Willie Horton ad. Newark hadone of the highest crime rates in the country, but Jordan’s parentsplugged their children into a close-knit Afro-centric community that wasa version of the aspirational Cosby world, one that had evolved from theblack nationalism and self-empowerment politics of the 1960s. In realterms, it meant a loose network of black churches, black schools, blackpolitical organizations, black-owned newspapers, and black clubs.Jordan’s was the kind of insular and conservative upbringing thatTa-Nehisi Coates, in his 2009 profile of Michelle Obama for TheAtlantic, called “a functioning, self-contained African Americanworld.” “We helicoptered them,” says Donna of her three children.“They were not out of our grasp at all. We orchestrated everything.”

When Jordan was growing up, his father would regularly dispense nuggetsof liberation philosophy and black history to his children, citingcanonical books on the African diaspora like The Destruction of BlackCivilization, by Chancellor Williams; Stolen Legacy, by George G. M.James; or Ethiopia and the Missing Link in African History, by theReverend Sterling Means. “Whenever I would go by the dining room, he’dalways be reading,” says Michael B. Jordan. “My dad was very adamantabout educating himself and giving us a sense of identity and tounderstand where we come from, and it’s not everything that’s taught inthe history books, in the schoolbooks.”

Jordan’s budding acting career was a source of pride in the Clinton Hillneighborhood of Newark, and, for his family, a source of income. By thetime Michael B. Jordan was acting in The Wire, his father had quit hisjob working nights as a supervisor at John F. Kennedy Airport to startan independent catering business, beginning with lunches at Jordan’sjunior high, a tuition-based private school called Chad, founded by theBlack Youth Organization in the 1960s with an emphasis on Afrocentrismand black pride. Donna worked as a kind of social worker at Chad,helping poor families navigate the system, and Jordan and his twosiblings, Khalid and Jamila, also attended. (His parents remain on theboard of directors.)

Jordan’s mother grew up in Newark in the 60s and 70s, studying paintingat Newark Arts High, the first performing-arts public high school inAmerica, whose alumni include Sarah Vaughan, Wayne Shorter, and SavionGlover (and, later, Michael B. Jordan, who attended for two years). As ateenager, she painted her bedroom walls in the colors of the Pan-Africanflag—red, black, and green—in sympathy with the Committee for aUnified Newark, a black-nationalist group founded by poet Amiri Baraka.“We would go by and we would see the guys in the berets and the armyfatigues as we were going home from school,” she says.

At Arts High, her interests ran to ballet and theater—she loved thesoundtrack to West Side Story—but she was also part of a studentwalkout in Newark in 1970 in protest over the killings at Kent State.

When I meet him at the West Hollywood arcade, Jordan’s father andnamesake, Michael A. Jordan, a taciturn man in a slate-gray Nehru shirt,has recently returned from Zambia, where he was involved in building awater system for farmers, the continuation of his years-long interest inAfrica. The senior Jordan, who goes by Tony, grew up in poverty-strickenSouth Central Los Angeles, one of six kids raised by a single mother,Dolores Jordan. His family paid regular visits to the US Organization,an educational and activist group started by Maulana Karenga and HakimJamal that used the term “Us” to mean blacks in the United States,which they sometimes referred to as “United Slaves.” It was Karengawho invented Kwanzaa as an African-American holiday; Jordan’s familycelebrated it throughout his childhood.

In 1974, the elder Jordan joined the Marines and simultaneously becamemore deeply committed to the Pan-African movement, which hashistorically called for a degree of racial separatism, overlapping attimes with the causes of the Black Panthers and rooted in a philosophyfirst formulated by Marcus Garvey. Garvey believed that racial paritywould only be achieved if the African-American world developed its ownsaints and heroes and martyrs, and he encouraged black self-empowermentthrough business ownership.

Donna had moved to California to live with a cousin and pursue her artwhen she met Tony, in 1982, while he was working at his cousin’sbarbecue joint in Compton. They bonded in part over black politics andmarried in 1984. When Michael was born, in Santa Ana, California, in1987, his parents gave him the middle name Bakari, Swahili for “noblepromise,” and until he became an actor, Bakari was what his familycalled him. The Jordan family traces its lineage to a slave namedBlackman, who married a Cherokee named Josephine (her portrait hangs inJordan’s Aunt Janet’s house, in Los Angeles).

When Jordan was an infant, his parents moved to New Jersey to live withDonna’s formidable mother, Geneva Davis, who lived near a good schooldistrict in middle-class Montclair. “It’s the lineage,” says Donna.“Family is everything. You protect your family, you make sure thateveryone is taken care of, you know? That structure was passed down frommy grandmother and grandfather. Together, they were unbelievable. Verypolitical, always working for politics, working in the community, makingsure everyone had what they needed.” (Her grandparents built asuccessful business in Venice, California, in the 1940s.)

In Newark, the Jordan family eventually befriended Cory Booker, thecity’s mayor, now a senator from New Jersey. “My dad used to cater forhim,” said Jordan. “Me and Cory Booker, Ras Baraka, the current mayor,everybody, the Baraka family, they’re all really good friends with myfamily.”

Michael B. Jordan’s friends all characterize Jordan’s father as“militant,” but they mean his child-rearing style as much as hispolitics. When his children misbehaved, he made them pick out their owntree branch from the yard to get switched. After Jordan got his driver’slicense and bought a BMW 330Ci with his acting money, he began hangingout in abandoned parking lots to race cars with illegal crews made up ofblack and Latino teenagers who were into “drifting,” high-speedsliding. His parents didn’t know about it, but when Jordan blew out histransmission one night, he called his father for help, resulting in aconfrontation. “I was scared sh*tless,” he says. “I knew I was gonnaget it.”

At this point, Jordan was still acting as Reggie in All My Children.

“For a split-second, it was like, ‘I’m grown. I work. I make my ownmoney. I can do this, you know? You guys can’t tell me I gotta be in atsuch and such, or whatever it is,’ and I got checked. I got checked. Iremember the first time you think you could challenge your father andthen you realize he’s a grown-ass man and you’re 120 pounds soaking wetwith a pocket full of nickels.

“We got closer because of it. And, yeah, so I think that was anothermoment of just being young and smelling yourself, and ‘O.K., I’m grown.’I wasn’t grown. I didn’t know everything. I didn’t know sh*t. Everydisciplinary ass-whooping that I got, every time I got reprimanded,everything, it all pays off. It all makes sense. I loved him for it.”

Michael B. Jordan views himself and his peers as the generational heirsto Will Smith and Denzel Washington.

“They broke down those barriers for us,” Jordan says. “Now it’s timefor us to take what they did and take it to the next level.”

In a New York Times dinner-table interview with Denzel Washington andMichael B. Jordan, the older actor, coiled and skeptical, evinced asubtle paternalistic attitude toward the younger actor. When Jordanopined on the importance of international-box-office receipts and saidhe wanted the director of HBO’s Fahrenheit 451, in which Jordan plays avillainous cop, to take his opinions seriously, Washington had to laugh:“Getting your big-boy voice.”

“There were no black superheroes when I was growing up,” notesWashington.

Jordan’s best movies have all been directed by Ryan Coogler, who usedJordan’s physical screen presence—his well-built body, his huge smile,the slow-burn vulnerability—to maximal effect. Whether Jordan canachieve a wider range and depth under different direction—or whetherhe has reached the limits of his craft—remains to be seen. But he isattempting to convert his success into something that won’t require himto be as brilliant on-screen as Denzel Washington: he’s turning himselfinto a business.

Jordan reportedly made only $2 million on Black Panther, though he sayshe gets residuals on the back end as part of the financial structure ofMarvel superhero movies. But he admits he was a “rookie” when hesigned up for Panther and didn’t yet command the money he can get now.“Moving forward it’s a totally different story,” he says. “This isthe defining moment in a lot of different areas for me that’s gonna setup my next 5 to 10. That’s why I’m so locked in right now, because if itwas ever a time to get distracted or, like, drop the ball, this is notit.”

In a film industry upended by Netflix and HBO, Jordan wants to leveragehis fame into a commercial enterprise that gives him ownership of hisown success and the power to break ground for black actors, directors,and producers in Hollywood. With 7.3 million In­stagram followers andnearly a million Twitter followers, Jordan is quickly building a brandthat includes new endorsem*nt deals, a fast-growing production company,and a new marketing operation that will curate and target TV shows andmovies to the same young, multicultural audiences who flocked to BlackPanther. Jordan’s budding company is modeled on those of his sportsheroes, especially the Lakers’ LeBron James, whose multi-mediamarketing-and-branding operation and TV production company is worthnearly a billion dollars. “Whenever I see [James], it’s love,always trying to represent our generation, represent our culture, like,‘Why not us?’ ” says Jordan. “Things don’t have to be the way they’vealways been done. I just happen to do more than just act.”

Jordan talks a lot with the Jay-Z and LeBron teams and closely studiestheir operations. His chief ally and architect in building his owncompany is Phillip Sun, a 36-year-old agent at William Morris Endeavor,who has assembled the most important roster of black talent in ageneration, including Lena Waithe, Donald Glover, Idris Elba, JohnBoyega, and Letitia Wright. “Michael’s always had the ambition of beinga brand from the get-go,” says Sun, who recruited Jordan away fromUnited Talent after the success of Fruitvale Station.

Born to parents who emigrated from Taiwan, Sun grew up speakingMandarin, graduated from William & Mary with a degree in internationalrelations, and was working as an on-set assistant to Parker Posey whenSteven Spielberg recommended he try becoming an agent. At 25, Sun becamethe youngest agent at the company after William Morris merged withEndeavor, in 2009. He was advised early on to specialize and decided tofocus on nonwhite actors, tutored by a pioneering black agent namedCharles D. King, who’d represented Terrence Howard and André 3000. Kingleft in 2015 to create his own production company devoted to actors ofcolor, called MACRO, which recently produced the Boots Riley comedySorry to Bother You. That left Sun to build his own roster at WME.“With the tutelage from Charles, and also just being a minority here,it was always important for me to fight for talent of color because, insome strange way, I was fighting for myself, giving myself a voice,” hesays.

The first Creed movie gave Jordan a kind of instant sports profile,leading to endorsem*nt deals with Nike, Piaget watches, and, of course,Acura. It also laid the groundwork for a successful film franchise. SaysSun, “You need your franchise because in order for him to achieve allthe things that he had the ambition to do, we had to make him a star, abona-fide star.”

Sun and Jordan hope the one-two punch of Black Panther and Creed II,coming out in the same year, will solidify Jordan’s stardom. But timingis critical. Creed II was fast-tracked to take advantage of the momentumof Black Panther, shot in the course of a month last spring, edited overthe summer, and, at the time of this writing, still being readied fortheaters for November—an “insane” schedule, says Jordan, who showedup in Philadelphia a month early to train and try building his body evenbigger than before (“I have to fit the story line”). The original ideafor Creed was based on Coogler’s relationship to his father, withwhom he bonded over the Rocky movies. Co-star Tessa Thompson saysCoogler didn’t conceive of Creed as a franchise, but Michael B. Jordansaw the potential instantly. Jordan says Coogler didn’t direct Creed IIbecause the schedule for Black Panther made it untenable. (Sly Stallonewas initially slated to direct the sequel, but Coogler insteadrecommended Caple, a former classmate at University of SouthernCalifornia film school.)

Hovering over Creed II is a fear that cynical studio heads will start tothink of Black Panther as a one-off that can’t translate to other filmsstarring black actors.

Sun has explicitly told his clients—including Jordan—that thesuccess of Black Panther will not necessarily smooth the path to moreand better roles. “By no means is this over. It’s not even getting thatmuch easier,” Sun says. “It’s just more of a conversation now.”

And so Creed II is an important test case for Jordan—to disprove, onceagain, the old studio cliché that black stars don’t sell overseas.“Nicolas Cage made so much money overseas,” says Jordan. “If youdon’t perform domestically, and you can still make moneyinternationally, you will always be around. That’s why Creed, Creed II,is so important nowadays, this time around, because it is moreinternational.”

Meanwhile, Jordan is quickly building on the momentum of Black Panther,ramping up his production company as an engine for movies and TV showsthat will define his brand. They’ll star not just himself but alsotalent he personally recruits, especially black artists. “I want tocreate projects for Brad Pitt, but at the same time I want to be able tocreate a movie for Will Smith, or Denzel, or Lupita, or Tessa,” saysJordan. “It’s gonna be eclectic. It’s gonna be animation. It’s gonna benon-scripted. It’s gonna be digital. It’s gonna be film, television.It’s gonna be video games.”

Conversely, that means avoiding becoming an actor associated exclusivelywith politically charged black roles like Oscar Grant. After Fruitvale,Jordan started making clear he was interested in “white male” roles,by which he meant roles with universal appeal. “Michael didn’t want tobe defined just by ‘Let’s send Michael all the race-relatedprojects,’ ” says Sun, “which is how the industry reacts to[something like that]. We understand that Michael will get theAfrican-American roles. I’ll find them, the industry will find me, we’lljust be presented those. It’s about seeing ourselves as a color-blindtalent, which he should be.”

With all these considerations about his brand and the arc of his career,often in conflict, picking roles has become more complicated. Sun saysthey analyze a role from every possible angle before making a decision.(Jordan turned down the chance to produce and star in Monsters and Men,for instance, which is about the killing of a black man by the police.)Jordan’s personal interests remain the same as when he was 15—sciencefiction and comic books—but also, he says, films featuring strongwomen and black history. Last spring, after Frances McDormand called formore diversity on Hollywood sets during her stirring Oscar speech,Jordan announced he’d use inclusion riders on all of his productions, acontractual commitment to employing racially and gender-diverse filmcrews. In September, Jordan convinced Warner Bros. to instituteinclusion riders across the entire studio.

Jordan has a lot on his plate. He is producing and starring in a sci-fiTV series called Raising Dion, for Netflix, about a black boy withsuperpowers (co-produced with Charles D. King’s MACRO), and making afeature film called Just Mercy, about a passionate young lawyerrepresenting death-row inmates, co-starring Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson.He’s also producing a coming-of-age TV series for Oprah’s OWN network,currently titled David Makes Man, written by playwright Tarell AlvinMcCraney, who co-wrote and produced the celebrated indie film Moonlight;and a historical epic about an all-black regiment during World War IIcalled The Liberators—an idea Jordan’s father tipped him to. Thenthere’s Jordan’s next movie with Ryan Coogler, Wrong Answer, about anotorious standardized-testing scandal in Georgia, with a script byTa-Nehisi Coates. Jordan is even preparing for his directorial debutwith a film adaptation of the best-selling young-adult novel The StarsBeneath Our Feet, about a young black boy who finds hope as an obsessiveLego builder after his brother is killed by a gang.

Jordan worries about how he will get Coogler and Coates and others tofit into his jam-packed schedule. But the collectivism of the company ispart of Jordan’s vision of black progress as a business plan.

“Unity is so important,” Jordan says. “You can just pick up the phoneand get in contact with somebody and have an idea, no ego: ‘What’s up?You guys wanna work together? Let’s do something together.’ ”

Meanwhile, Jordan is prepping a remake of one of his favorite movies,the classic heist picture The Thomas Crown Affair, which originallystarred Steve McQueen, in 1968, and later Pierce Brosnan, in a 1999remake. Producing and directing black-centric projects while starring inroles that have traditionally gone to white actors is part of thedesign.

This fall, Jordan will assemble a new marketing company with twochildhood friends, including Sterling Brim, a former music manager whoco-hosts the MTV program Ridiculousness. Phillip Sun describes it as a“cultural marketing-and-consulting group” that can deliver youngaudiences of color to movie houses and TV screens through curated socialmedia and music soundtracks. “We feel like we have a pretty soundperspective and opinion on how to market certain things, especially toour culture,” says Jordan.

The first customer for the start-up was Creed II. Sterling Brim helped curatethe hip-hop soundtrack, which included Nas and Lil Wayne. Jordan planson making a marketing contract with his company part of any film deal hecuts with a studio, whether it be Warner Bros. or Netflix. The idea isfor Jordan to collect a revenue stream from every part of theproduction—his studio salary, the production, the endorsem*nts, themarketing, the product placements, the video games, the apps. Eventuallyhe wants to own all of his own content and be the C.E.O. of what amountsto a mini-studio, making him a de facto Hollywood mogul. “Our nextstep,” says Sun, “will be an umbrella company to finance all of thethings we want to do, and then ultimately the long-term plan is for thatumbrella company to own whatever content that he creates. That is a stepfor Michael and the team to becoming the mogul status that he wants tobe.”

Before I fly to Los Angeles to meet Michael B. Jordan, he expressesconcern to his representatives that Vanity Fair is sending a whitereporter to profile him. He’s been interviewed by plenty of whitereporters, but he’s also felt misunderstood and occasionally burned.When I ask him about this, Jordan says: “There is an unspoken languagebetween people of color, black men or whatever, because they justunderstand what it is, what it feels like, my intentions when I saycertain things, they know exactly what I mean, what I’m trying to say.And sometimes when you deal with journalists and writers who are tryingto observe from the outside, and what they think you’re trying to say,it doesn’t always connect. It’s not always the same thing.”

While Jordan tries to get the predominantly white media to understandwhere he’s coming from, he also has to manage his black fan base, whohave very specific and passionate ideas about what a black man should bedoing. Jordan recently went on a vacation to the Amalfi Coast, in Italy,where he was captured by paparazzi riding in a motorboat with palSterling Brim and several white women in bikinis. The photos re-igniteda long-simmering rumor that Jordan prefers white women, a contentiousissue for black celebrities dating back to Richard Pryor, who regularlyexplored the subject in standup routines. One critic on Twittersuggested they “throw [Jordan] in the ocean with his ancestors.”Jordan jumped on Instagram to try talking down the controversy, arguingto readers of the Shade Room, a black gossip site, that there simplyweren’t many black women in Italy and that he liked all flavors of“milk,” including chocolate: “Y’all are buggin’, teeing off on yourboy, aight?” (Not everyone bought his explanation.)

There is a high degree of pressure on Michael B. Jordan to not screwthis up. The career path described by his agent is a narrow one,littered with leering paparazzi, an obsessive social-media sphere,box-office expectations, cultural misunderstandings, and the doublestandard for successful black men. I ask Jordan about the pressure—tosucceed, but also to make his community proud, his parents, friends,fellow actors and producers, the whole team he’s propping up with jobsand roles and possibilities. “I think about that a lot,” he says.We’re parked under a tree near Sunset Boulevard, and the racing is over.“It’s being the guy that has the opportunities and is in a positionthat can change the lives of a lot of people that you care about. It’s anatural weight of not wanting to f*ck up, you know what I’m saying, andnot wanting—and that’s why I overthink a little bit too much, or I’malways thinking about . . .”

He pauses to collect his thoughts.

“I’m not comfortable yet because the people around me aren’tcomfortable, either, and it’s like I gotta get to a place where I’mlike, ‘All right, the thing is moving on its own. The machine isrunning,’ you know what I’m saying? I can check in on maintenance everyonce in a while, but I gotta get the machine running, and I gotta keeppushing this boulder until I get some momentum. Once it starts to rollon its own, I can kinda start to live my life a little bit more, andthat’s the sacrifice that people don’t really get. These people you seewith these legacies, they don’t ever talk about what they sacrificed toget there. People think these things just happen. It’s not like that.They give up so much of their personal life, their love life, whatever,this, that, and personal things.”

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This fall, Jordan is finally moving out of the house he’s lived in withhis parents for two years and into a penthouse in downtown Los Angeles,three blocks from the home of a friend in his entourage. Jordan says hehas worked so hard and so intensely since he was 15, he’s only managedto find personal space in recent months, often on open stretches ofhighway, usually at frightening speeds. “I enjoy life 160 miles perhour at a time,” he says. He likes the sound of that and smiles. In away, Denzel Washington was right—Jordan is finding his voice. And hismother, Donna, is already worried: “He’s crazy,” she says. “He’s realcrazy.”

“I think you can let him go now,” his father says, breaking into asmile. “He’s done pretty well.”

A version of this story appears in the November issue.

CORRECTIONS: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Ryan Coogler’s father is deceased. He is not. It also misidentified the television outlet to which Michael B. Jordan gave an interview at MBJAM. It was Extra.