Why Black Panther Star Michael B. Jordan Went To Therapy After His Marvel Role

Inhabiting a character as fully as possible can be a difficult task — and during an interview to promote his Oscar-nominated turn as twins in "Sinners," Michael B. Jordan revealed that his superhero movie "Black Panther" put him in such a weird headspace that he went to therapy after playing the film's villain, Erik "Killmonger" Stevens.

If you've seen director Ryan Coogler's 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe movie "Black Panther, you likely recall that Erik, cast out of his rightful home of Wakanda, returns to the secluded and technologically advanced African nation to challenge his cousin Prince T'Challa (the late, great Chadwick Boseman) for the throne. Erik, as we learn, is an orphan and suffered through a lonely childhood ... and as Jordan revealed on CBS Sunday Morning, he put himself in a rough mental state for the film to make his performance as convincing as possible. As he put it:

"So, for a while in preparation for that role, I didn't really speak to my family that much. I was kind of isolated a bit. I went to my hole and tried to live like he would have lived for a bit, whatever that process was. After the movie, it kind of stuck with me for a bit. Went to therapy, talked about it, found a way to kind of just decompress. I think at that point, I was still learning that I needed to decompress from a character."

After saying acting can be "solitary," Jordan said that he realized he couldn't be happy being so isolated ... and therapy was necessary. "That's something I'm not ashamed of at all and very proud of," he clarified. "It definitely helped me throughout the years and to this day, of trying to be a good communicator and well-rounded person inside and out."

Elsewhere in that CBS Sunday Morning interview, Michael B. Jordan told interviewer Tracy Smith that he tends to carry his characters with him, particularly because he works so hard to connect with them. "Each character kind of lives with you. They don't go anywhere. They're there," he mused. "Some piece of that character ... it's a blurred line between yourself and the character, for me, anyway." So, how did he approach playing a guy who's, yes, quite villainous — he's pretty casual about murder, for one thing — but who also makes a good point by angrily saying Wakanda should be sharing its wealth and success with oppressed Black citizens of the world?

As Jordan revealed, he doesn't consider Killmonger to be a true "villain," but a "complex, layered antagonist" that he understood on some level. "He was the other side of a conversation. Him and T'Challa were a lot alike, they both cared about their people, deeply, and would do anything to protect them," he continued. "They just had two different approaches and strategies and mentalities around it all, shaped by their childhood trauma."

The heaviest part of Killmonger, though, is his loneliness — which must have been hard for Jordan to internalize. "And Erik didn't really know a lot of love. Erik didn't experience that. He had a lot of betrayal," Jordan noted. "He had a lot of failed systems around him that shaped him, and his anger and his frustration, and looking at history and how it seemed to always repeat itself, and how was he going to break that cycle?" Killmonger is ultimately defeated by T'Challa, but these days, Jordan is still thoughtfully crafting bold, fascinating characters.

As you might know, Michael B. Jordan became a first-time Oscar nominee in January of 2026 thanks to "Sinners," his latest collaboration with his friend and frequent creative partner, Ryan Coogler. In fact, the film (which tells a devastating, scary, and triumphant story about one fateful night at a juke joint in a remote area of the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s) smashed the all-time Oscar nominations record, earning a stunning 16 nods ... including one for Jordan thanks to his dual roles as hustling twins Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore. As the pair try to open a juke joint in the movie, they're attacked by a band of roving vampires — only to realize that other, even worse dangers are also threatening their community.

According to a profile in the Los Angeles Times in December 2025, Jordan approached his double role just as thoughtfully as he did when he played Killmonger. In fact, he even experienced some isolation again as he learned to, well, become twins. "I locked myself away and we did some chakra work and explored how childhood trauma manifested itself physically with these guys — the way they speak, the cadence, how they rest," Jordan shared. "I started to feel subtle differences as I shifted between Smoke and Stack. It's crazy because sometimes I'd look in the mirror and say, 'Wow, I don't see myself at all.' That's when you know you're moving in the right direction."

There's no question that Jordan's methods are intense, but they also clearly work — he's incredible in both "Black Panther" and "Sinners." The former is currently streaming on Disney+, while the latter is streaming on HBO Max.