Page 82 - Esquire - USA (Winter 2020)
P. 82
They pose Jordan on one of the benches.
Gio pops off several shots. MBJ gets up and
checks the images on the monitor, offers
feedback—a little preview of the director’s
blood running through him. He takes his seat
again, does more poses.
Once everyone’s satisfied, people are
standing around, and someone hands him
the head of the mascot’s suit. Michael
Bakari Jordan, megamoviestar, Arts High
class of ’05, sticks the huge jaguar on his own
world-famous head.
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL,
FOR THE BIG PREMIERE
Far from Newark, the director (Destin Daniel
Cretton) of MBJ’s new movie (Just Mercy)
NEWARK ARTS HIGH SCHOOL, brought the cast out on the stage before a
screening. We were in the Elgin Theatre,
FOR THE PHOTO SHOOT a venue last-century decadent, with opera
Up ahead, there’s a production moho (what boxes and red velvet seats and a domed ceil-
industry folks call a mobile home) in the park- ing and walls adorned in ornate gold.
ing lot behind the school. The moho is hella Out they strolled: the veteran Tim Blake
conspicuous, which is a hazard of sorts, be- The boys, who’ve been told they’ll be part of Nelson, Rob Morgan (a scene-stealer if ever
cause megamoviestar Michael B. Jordan is a photo shoot but have been deprived of all there was one), Oscar winner Jamie Foxx,
inside it—with a team of people prepping other details, are engaged in something be- Oscar winner Brie Larson. And to the loud-
him for his cover shoot—and the plan is to tween pure basketball antics and a layup drill. est whoops and hollers and one loud mar-
secret him around his old high school with- There’s a full crew set up in the locker riage proposal, Jordan swanked on stage
out the whole student body catching wind room when I enter. This locker room reeks looking supercaliswagalistic in a silver-
that he’s in the building and going apeshit. of the locker rooms of my yore, and might embroidered three-quarter-length black
One of the production team escorts me not have been painted since MBJ was roam- jacket, a button-down shirt so white it was
into the basement room that’s been repur- ing the halls, hair braided and dressed in a tall neon white, tailored black slacks, and black
posed for craft services, where I meet the white tee and über-capacious jeans, around pointed shoes with a glint of metal at the toe.
photographer, Gio Valentine. Gio’s a black the time he was playing the unforgettable Just Mercy was adapted from a memoir by
man, just like Jordan and me, which at once Wallace in the first season of The Wire, be- Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and social-justice
makes the pressure to do right by this assign- fore he was the cocky quarterback on Fri- advocate who has devoted his life to fight-
ment feel magnified. day Night Lights, before the breakout lead ing for justice for people behind the walls.
If you’ve been on a photo shoot, you know role in Fruitvale Station, before he reignited The film details the true quest of Steven-
there’s ever at least one unexpected prob- the Rocky franchise as Adonis Creed, before son—that’s Jordan—to free an Alabama
lem to solve. One of today’s conundrums is Black Panther heralded him to anyone who man named Walter McMillian (Foxx, at the
how to find a speaker so Jordan can listen to hadn’t seen him yet. top of his game), who was wrongly convicted
music while he shoots. The best the school When word comes over the radio that Jor- of murdering a teenage white girl.
can offer is a decrepit CD/cassette-player dan’s ready, I am posted outside the lock- Jordan’s performance is the film’s engine.
contraption from the nineties. There’s a tiny er room. Several students scuttle past, yell- There’s this one scene early on (and I hope
summit held to figure where in Newark to ing, “Michael B. Jordan is here! Yo, Michael this recounting is worth at least an itty-bitty
cop a Bluetooth speaker. B. Jordan is here!” and cause no slight pan- spoiler) in which Stevenson visits McMillian
Given the logistical goal of secrecy, mem- ic in the woman standing beside me. Jordan in prison for the first time. Picture a young,
bers of the editorial team confirm, reconfirm, saunters into the locker room, seeming insou- Ivy-educated black lawyer from up north
and reconfirm the reconfirmation of which ciant about his cover being blown, wearing showing up in Alabama with the intention of
route is the safest to ferry MBJ from the moho a black T-shirt and striped slacks. He strolls getting a black man off death row. That first
to the first location of the day: his old locker around the room, smiles as he peeks in cor-
room. Ahead of MBJ’s entrance, I preview ners, opening and closing his old locker, con-
the route and notice it passes right by a lunch- firming how little has changed. His videog-
When Jordan surprise-visited his old
room of boisterous teens, as well as past the rapher has a small speaker roped around his
school, Newark Arts High, for
gym, where through tall windows can be seen neck playing “Feels,” by Ed Sheeran featuring the Esquire photo shoot, he was greeted
the varsity boys basketball team, dressed in Young Thug and J Hus, and when I ask where’d as a returning god. This and the other images in
their white-and-green uniforms—go Jaguars. they buy it, he says he had it the whole time. the story were taken that day.
72 Winter 2020_Esquire
