Unboxing Michael B Jordan

From his breakthrough roles as teenage drug dealer Wallace on HBO’s The Wire and as quarterback Vince on Friday Night Lights, to being showered with acclaim for Marvel blockbusters Fantastic Four and Black Panther, Michael B Jordan’s rise to fame has been meteoric. In Creed II, Jordan reprises his role as boxer Adonis Creed.

How tough was the training this time around? “This one was heavy. Coming off of Black Panther as Killmonger and him being more of a soldier, I wanted to look more like a boxer again. So the diet was a little stricter on this one. I ate like four or five times a day, worked out two to three times a day and just boxed.” Is this sequel just about Adonis avenging his father’s death? “Adonis feels, naturally, a certain animosity towards Viktor Drago [whose father killed Adonis’s dad in Rocky IV] and then there are other themes in there: the maturity of growth, the importance of family, of legacy… it is what makes Creed so special.” Sylvester has been playing Rocky for 42 years. Is Adonis still going to be kicking around four decades from now? “If I’m lucky. I want to keep making them as long as they’re good. I always want to keep my finger on the pulse. Forty two years, I mean, who knows?”