Michael B. Jordan is hardly an old man. He’s only 36. But he certainly noticed a difference when it came to bulking up to play boxer Adonis Creed for a third round in the ring with this week’s Creed III.
“It’s a commitment,” Jordan tells Yahoo Entertainment in a new interview. “And it’s not easy. The older you get, it gets a little bit harder. But I love exercise. I love working out and staying in shape. But walking around like that [in Creed shape] is really hard to do.”
Jordan loved shedding the extra muscle, particularly when it came to finishing the movie, or as he puts it, “sitting in this dark room, eating snacks.”
The series had some heavy-hitting filmmakers (Ryan Coogler helmed 2015’s Creed, while Steven Caple Jr. took over for Creed II) behind it through two installments. Now, Jordan makes his directorial debut with Creed III — thus all that time in the editing bay snacking on dried mangoes.
Michael B. Jordan, Mila Davis-Kent and Tessa Thompson in Creed III. (Photo: Eli Ade /© MGM /Courtesy Everett Collection)
Unlike her work as Valkyrie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thompson avoids the action in the Creed films as recording artist Bianca Taylor, who in Part 3 has largely retired from performing due to her partial hearing loss.
“I feel like these movies are essentially about family and about relationships,” Thompson says. The backdrop is boxing, but I’m not sure that the films are really about boxing. I think they’re also about the moments that you have to fight for something, or fight through something. And I feel like fundamentally as humans, we understand what that is. And I think that was true of all the Rocky films that preceded it, and certainly in our franchise. I think that’s really what the films are about.”
Thompson says she’s always made it a point to play homage to Talia Shire, the First Lady of the original series as Rocky Balboa’s now-deceased wife Adrian, through her performances.
