In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast features in-depth conversations with today’s most noteworthy actors and creators. Join host and senior editor Vinnie Mancuso for this guide to living the creative life from those who are doing it every day.
Jonathan Majors is a Netflix Western hero, the latest big bad in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and will trade blows with Michael B. Jordan in the upcoming “Creed III.” He is, in other words, extremely cool. But the secret to his success, he says, is how deeply uncool he can be when it comes to his craft.
“It’s OK to care. That’s one of the things that really gets me about actors—about us,” he says. “Sometimes, there’s this devil-may-care attitude: ‘I’ll get to it when I get to it.’ The truth of the matter is, you care more about this thing than anything else in the world, and it scares you to death. You can act cool about it, [but] I don’t act cool about it at all. It is what I love the most.”
On this episode of In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast, Majors dives deep into the process that led him to playing Kang the Conqueror, joining “Creed III,” and more.
Majors has invented his own term for the time between “action” and “cut.”
“I call that moment ‘the fall.’ You’ve worked so hard—or in some cases, you haven’t—but you’ve worked. You’ve prepared, in a way, to build a ladder. Your dialect, your costume, even the lights and set decoration—all of that is part of the ladder that’s being built. How high that ladder is depends on how deep your preparation is—spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially. So when they say ‘action,’ you just step off the ladder. If you have a deep preparation, your ladder tends to be higher, and you can just essentially free-fall. Whatever happens, happens. Because as you’re falling, you’re passing all your homework.”
“Devotion” Courtesy Sony Pictures
His physical transformations for the MCU, “Creed III,” and upcoming bodybuilding drama “Magazine Dreams” all came with character-focused goals in mind.
“For the Kang situation, it’s like: Suit the word to the action and the action to the word, right? Here, it’s: Suit the body to the character and the character to the body. With Kang, there’s just so much IP. There is ocular proof as to what and how Kang the Conqueror moves. You have to serve that.
In regards to Damian, my character in ‘Creed III,’ this guy has been in isolation for a very long time. You always have to ask, Why? Why is he built like that? The ‘whys’ for these characters are all different. Damian has been put away; he’s been in jail for 18 years. That is a certain type of mentality. That’s a certain type of gaping hole. You’re trying to fill something up, in a way. It’s a very particular cocktail. Rage plus loss plus aspiration gives you what? Then there’s the circumstances of being in prison. What’s that culture like? This man has a body that protects his life, not his ego. That’s how most bodies are built on the street. You have a body to protect your ego; this guy has a body to protect his life.
Then you have [my “Magazine Dreams” character] Killian Maddox, who is an amateur bodybuilder. He comes from a particular background. He’s a young Black man, and he’s alone. What is his gaping hole? The psychology of the body is interesting. What is a bodybuilder? Why do bodybuilders want to be big? That is a matter of control. What does a body look like that is extremely disciplined and controlled? When you see that body, what does that make you feel? That’s the big thing. When you see Damian, when you see Killian, when you see Kang, you should feel something.”
Above all, Majors seeks to find empathy in art.
“Art, cinema, and acting can serve as a sort of democracy. You learn so much about each other; we learn so much about others via cinema, via TV. It is integral, and I wish we felt like it was OK to say that. [J.D. Dillard’s 2022 Korean War drama ‘Devotion’] is extremely…not even important; I don’t like the word ‘important.’ But it’s an integral film. It gives a cheat sheet on how two people can coexist and thrive and move their country and themselves and their families forward. It’s a story about how an individual born in the mud can literally make his way to the sky. Who doesn’t want to hear that story? Who is battling with illness who couldn’t benefit from that? Who is under the thumb of poverty who couldn’t benefit from that? So I go, If you don’t respect it, you should step off. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. But put some respect on it.”
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