Michael B. Jordan Was ‘Hyped’ Seeing Two of Himself in ‘Sinners’ (Exclusive)

Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler are collaborating again on the 1930s-set vampire thriller “Sinners.”  

“Extra’s” Carlos Greer spoke with Michael and Ryan about the movie, which has Michael playing twins, Smoke and Stack!

It wasn’t easy to play twins. Jordan admitted, “It was pretty challenging but a lot of fun as well, you know. Getting a chance to develop, you know, two characters… not just two characters but… twin brothers and their dynamic and, you know, the work that we did to develop how they walk and how they talk and the mannerisms and how they hold their body, and, you know, the different tics that they both had, and, you know, how they care deeply for their significant others and their friends and how they wanted to protect everybody.”

As for his reaction to seeing two versions of himself on the screen, Jordan said, “I was hyped. I think I yelled out an audible ‘woo.’ First time I saw it was last night, you know what I’m saying, on the 70 mm… special, and it was a shot that we spent a lot of time trying to get, so the technicality of them passing the cigarette back and forth and lighting it, you know, and smoking it, you know, even without looking at times, you know, was an extreme challenge.”

Michael and Ryan have worked together on several movies like “Black Panther,” “Creed,” and “Fruitvale Station.”

It’s been 10 years since they first started working together!

Michael spoke about the impact of their partnership on his career, saying, “It’s extremely important to me… I feel like, at a time, you know, earlier in my career when I was figuring out what type of actor I wanted to be, you know, lead actor, you know, like where do I stand in entertainment industry? Only been a part of ensembles and in this nature, never opened a movie before, never been a lead of a film before, so I was searching for that and, you know, Ryan was the first director to believe in that… and tell me I was a movie star and believed it and made me believe it, you know, and we went out and we did it, you know… in this film ‘Fruitvale Station’ and then we continued to grow and prosper from there.”

Ryan explored a new genre with their latest film “Sinners.” He said, “I loved it. I mean, it was multiple genres for me, you know, because the film slips in a lot of different ones and this is me, kind of like baring as much of myself as I could, you know, to the theatrical audience.”

He added, “So for this one, you know, I was really excited to bring stories to audiences where they had no idea where it was going, you know, because that’s one of my favorite feelings to have in a theater, you know, and I hadn’t given people that yet.”