To be young, Black and successful — and disruptive — in this industry, there’s a certain navigation to get to the place I need to get to. This is the… - Michael B. Jordan

When I was younger, I don’t know if I could have handled the onslaught of opinions and being picked apart, and also being conscious of what the other person’s going to go through. It takes a special person to deal with that.

Growing up on set, in the industry, over 20 years, and starting out doing background work and extra work and just seeing the sets evolve and seeing everybody’s job and seeing how a real production took place, I finally got to this place in my career where I wanted to tell a story and not just be in front of the camera to execute somebody else’s vision.

There are roles that I passed on that I knew I didn’t have enough life experience to play. I was like, ‘What can I pull from?’. But I finally found what love was.