Jonathan Majors is perfecting the movie villain

With two significant villain roles at once, Jonathan Majors is tapping into the humanity of those we fear.

Creed III is in cinemas from Thursday, March 2. Picture: Eli Ade/MGM

Jonathan Majors doesn’t have a grand plan but he does have a mission.

He landed on the Hollywood scene only six years earlier and in that time, he’s had a meteoric rise. He’s worked for Spike Lee on Da 5 Bloods, won acclaim for his roles in drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco and HBO sci-fi series Lovecraft Country.

And he’s been cast as the Big Bad villain of the current tranche of the Marvel movies. Influential American podcast NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour just this week casually threw his name on a list of prestige actors.

It’s a very big deal for someone whose first screen credit was in 2017.

Majors is about to punch out in an even bigger way in Creed III, playing the antagonist to Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed.

“It’s probably the fastest I’ve signed on to a project,” Majors told news.com.au “What was presented to me was a Creed film with Michael B. Jordan directing and that was enough for me.

“Culturally, for the two of us to come together was potentially pretty monumental. You add that to the history and the legacy of the Rocky franchise and I thought, ‘Well, yeah’.”

Jonathan Majors’ rise has been meteoric. Picture: Derek White/Getty Images

Majors is a potent force as Damian “Dame” Anderson, a childhood friend of Adonis’ who makes a comeback after 20 years in prison. Dame is, as Wood Harris’ character puts it, “fighting the world”.

He’s a ball of anger and embitterment, resentful of Adonis for his success, for a life Dame thought should be his. Dame may be the “villain”, a character that has to follow the paths of Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed or Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago, but he has to be human. That’s what makes a Rocky villain iconic.

“There are two sides to every coin,” Majors explained. “When you play a hero [or a villain], you want to find the complexity of it. Who the good guy is and who the bad guy really depends on how it ends.

“We’re growing as a culture, so when I look at a script, I ask, ‘Is this role pejorative, do I see the nuance in it, do I see the humanity in it?’ If I don’t see it and I still really want to do the project because of whatever, I go in there and try to infuse it with that.

“Luckily, that wasn’t the case with this. Dame was already there. I saw the ins and outs of it.

“I have personal experience with people who are close to me who have been incarcerated, and that fighting mentality, that street mentality, that’s something I’m quite familiar with. So I understand everybody’s not all good and everybody’s not all bad, and I look for that opportunity.”

Adonis and Dame’s inevitable face off in the ring. Picture: Eli Ade/MGM

Adonis may be Dame’s other side of the coin on screen, but off-screen, Majors and Jordan are now great buddies.

Majors said the Creed veteran really helped him understand the fight choreography – “He’d say to me, ‘You have to come here, bro, I know it feels funny, but you’ve got to throw it that way because the lens is here’, because he’d been there before, he had a good grasp on it”.

But there was still a healthy tension between the two which Majors used to fuel their characters’ dynamic, a thorny bond marked by rivalry and regret.

“We began our conversation as Damien and Adonis, and in many ways, it was us silently challenging each other and matching each other and pushing each other from the beginning of the production to even now.

“There were moments where I wasn’t sure who was talking to me because if Adonis is talking to me right now, I can’t hear it, but if my director’s talking to me, I’m all ears. So we have a patois where I could look and see where he was at.”

Creed III is Jordan’s first time in the director’s chair, but as other actors have often said about actor-directors, they have an innate understanding of what a performer needs.

Majors credited Jordan’s aptitude as a director, and said that like other great helmers, Jordan was great at creating a world around their actor. “Ultimately, I was directed by someone who is now one of my best friends. That friendship and camaraderie was being built throughout the shoot.”

Jonathan Majors had to embark on a fitness regimen for Creed III Picture: Ser Baffo/MGM

There’s a crossover between the world of Creed and the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Majors is committed to a multi-project arc which will require him to draw on all of his talent, skill and training (he went to Yale’s renowned drama school).

As Kang the Conqueror, Majors is not only the main villain of Marvel Studios’ current saga, he plays multiple versions of him. He made his debut in the first season of the Loki streaming series as one variant of the character, He Who Remains, and played a fiercer, more dangerous version in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Joining the Marvel machine is a huge step for an actor. It’s immersing yourself in a committed, opinionated fandom and knowing your face will be projected onto tens of thousands of screens around the world. The greater the exposure, and arguably Marvel movies are dominating cinema culture, the greater the external pressure.

Even though Jordan, Creed III co-star Tessa Thompson and producer Ryan Coogler (who also directed Creed and Creed II) have all worked on Marvel projects, Majors is drawing from a strength closer to home when it comes to wrangling with the non-acting aspects of the circus.

Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror in the Marvel movies. Picture: Marvel Studios

He credited his parents and grandparents with giving him that foundation.

“No one can teach you how to behave, no one can teach you how to stay calm under pressure, and no one can help you build your point of view as an adult. They can help you out,” he said.

“But the idea of the machinery, my hardware was already built by the time I got here. I played He Who Remains when I was 30 years old, I had already moved all over the country and was raising a kid. I’m not worried about somebody bothering me on the street.”

So while it seems like Majors must have a grand plan given his trajectory so far, he’s still taking it one role at a time.

“It’s not a matter of my phone ringing steadily,” he said. “It just so happens the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to go from one role to the next to the next.

“My focus is, when you get something like Dame, when someone like Michael B. Jordan comes to you, or someone like Spike Lee or [Marvel boss Kevin] Feige comes to you, I’m not thinking about what I’ve done before or what I’m going to do next.

“I’m trying to blast a hole into forever with this one, and whatever happens after that happens.”

Creed III is in cinemas from Thursday, March 2

Originally published as Jonathan Majors is perfecting the movie villain