Yvonne Villarreal is a senior television writer for the Calendar section and co-host of 'The Envelope' podcast.
Michael B. Jordan is a first-time Academy Award winner. The 'Sinners' star won the lead actor Oscar for his dual roles as Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler's Southern Gothic horror film, which received a record 16 Oscar nominations including best picture.
With his win, Jordan became the first performer in more than half a century to top the lead actor category for playing twins. Lee Marvin previously won for portraying twin gunfighters Kid Shelleen and Tim Strawn in the 1965 western spoof 'Cat Ballou.' 'I stand here because of the peope that came before me,' Jordan said as he accepted the honor Sunday evening, citing venerated Black actors including Denzel Washington. 'Thank you, everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me on my career,' he said. Jordan beat out competitors Timothée Chalamet , Leonardo DiCaprio , Ethan Hawke and Wagner Moura for the award. For the majority of the Oscars race, awards prognosticators concurred that Chalamet was headed for victory, but convictions wavered after Jordan notched a surprise win at the Actor Awards — to Viola Davis' great delight. In preparation to play the prodigal twins in 'Sinners,' Jordan told The Times that he trained with dialect coach Beth McGuire, who also worked on Coogler's 'Black Panther' and its sequel, 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.' 'I locked myself away and we did some chakra work and explored how childhood trauma manifested itself physically with these guys — the way they speak, the cadence, how they rest,' Jordan described of the training process. 'I started to feel subtle differences as I shifted between Smoke and Stack. It’s crazy because sometimes I’d look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow, I don’t see myself at all.’ That’s when you know you’re moving in the right direction.” The twins' differences even trickled down to their footwear, Jordan said. While the calculated Smoke sports a slightly oversized shoe that keeps him slow-moving, Stack wears a too-tight shoe that represents his inability to sit still. 'That's how he coped with his trauma,' the actor said, 'through his slick talk and smiling and laughing and going from one thing to the next because he wanted to f— move on from the pain like it didn’t happen.”
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