A boxer must face a challenge from his past in Director Michael B. Jordan’s sports drama, Creed III.
In the follow-up to Director Ryan Coogler’s Creed and Steven Caple Jr.’s Creed II, Jordan both stars and directs the film that finds boxing champion Adonis Creed forced to put his future on the line when Damian — a childhood friend and former boxing prodigy — resurfaces after serving time in prison, eager to settle an old score and prove that he deserves his shot in the ring.
On March 5, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Jordan discussed the making of Creed III during a Q&A moderated by Director Tim Miller (Deadpool).
In the conversation, Jordan spoke about the challenges of also playing in the lead role during his directorial debut.
“On the first day of filming, there was a lot of me wondering who was going to run around and yell ‘action’, who yells ‘cut’? How do I get out of this [scene as an actor]? And then it just started to define itself. I created a system with my 1st AD [Kate Greenberg] and used that [as a way out of the scene].”
The veteran performer also spoke about learning how to communicate from a Director’s point of view. “The level of communication I had to have with everybody — in order to get the best out of them and keep that same mindset to know we’re making the same movie — was I had to learn how to speak to everyone in their own love language.”
Creed III is Jordan’s directorial debut. He became a DGA member in 2022.
You can listen to Jordan's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.