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Michael B. Jordan credited his success in Hollywood to his experience working on a soap opera.
In an interview with PEOPLE at the American Cinematheque Awards, where he was being honored, Jordan opened up about his time on the soap opera “All My Children,” which ran from 1970 to 2011. He played the role of Reggie Montgomery from 2003 to 2006, which was played by his late collaborator Chadwick Boseman before him.
Jordan explained that the role helped put him on the radar of casting directors and Hollywood executives, often because of their wives.
“I never knew how many casting directors and executives in Hollywood would tell me, ‘Oh man, my wife really loves you.’ Or like, ‘Oh, she watches you all the time on the stories. … Come in for this and read for that,’ ” he told PEOPLE. “It opened up so many doors in the most unexpected places for me, and that was… I think looking back at it, that was something that definitely caught me off guard,” he continued.
The “All My Children” casting director Judy Blye Wilson told the publication earlier this year that Jordan replaced Boseman after the “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” actor was fired from the role because he wasn’t the right fit for a teenage character.
“I did cast [Chadwick] Boseman, who became very famous, as we all know,” Wilson said about the actor, who was 26 when he played the role. “And he was only on the show for just a week, because they really wanted the character to be about 16, 15 years old.”
Boseman had a different story. He said in 2019 that he was vocal about the role of Reggie, whose character is a troubled teen involved with a gang, being stereotypical, which is why he was fired. Jordan, who was 15 at the time, stepped in to replace him.
Jordan had already acted on some major projects by the time he got to “All My Children.” He played the role of Wallace on the HBO series “The Wire,” which he also credited for “opening doors” for him, and had also appeared in “The Sopranos” and “Cosby.” After “All My Children,” he went on to appear in several television shows, such as “CSI: Crime Investigation” and “Cold Case,” and he landed a significant role in 2009 as Vince Howard in the final seasons of Friday Night Lights.
Reflecting on his stint in the soap opera world, he said that the demanding work of soap operas gave him discipline.
“I think soap operas, we’re doing a hundred-plus pages a day,” he told PEOPLE. “The work ethic, the grind of that definitely gave me a built-in work ethic and helped me refine that discipline at an early age.”
