Michael B. Jordan is going to be a sight to see in his latest film, A Journal for Jordan, which will feature him bare.
The film, which is a Denzel Washington-directed drama will also be Jordan’s first nude scene.
“As an actor, if you’re going to expose yourself and be vulnerable, you have to do it in the most elevated way possible,” Jordan tells Yahoo Entertainment. “And the pieces involved here included working with Denzel on this incredible true story. I was like, ‘This is the one I’ll go there for.'”
The movie is a memoir by journalist Dana Canedy, and it recounts her relationship with Charles Monroe King, a 1st Sergeant in the U.S. Army.
King was killed during the Iraq War. During his time on duty, he kept a journal for their son, Jordan, who was an infant at the time his father died.
Canedy (who is played by Chanté Adams) gave the journal to Jordan with hopes it would help him to understand the kind of man his father was.
The journal doesn’t actually discuss the intimate moments between Dana and Charles, including the aforementioned nude scene. However, Washington was persuaded to create the scene by his cinematographer, Maryse Alberti.
“During this intimate lovemaking scene, he was like, ‘As a woman, where would you wanna put the camera?'” Jordan recalls Washington asking Alberti. “And she was like, ‘On Michael B.’s butt!'” I was like, ‘Alright! Let’s do it.'”
Adams will also appear naked in the scene, that was filmed on a closed set. “They want to make it as intimate as possible, but also protect the actors,” she notes. “Of course, we knew it was going to be a very fun scene for [the audience] but as actors and as people coming to work that day, we have to treat it as something very serious. And we always do!”
Adds Jordan: “Everybody does everything humanly possible to make sure the actors are safe and comfortable. But you’ve just got to go for it. If you overthink it, you won’t do it.”
Jordan is the son of a marine and says he felt a close connection to the couple’s story. “I’ve always heard stories and been around the military in some way, shape, or form,” he notes. “So to be able to portray Charles, you just take all of those experiences and memories, and you just want to do the best job to … do his story justice. I couldn’t be prouder.”
Adams, on the other hand, was proud to work on a film that depicts what military partners experience when their partner is on tour duty.
“Our soldiers who are fighting are truly protecting this country and hats off to them, but also the spouses … and the partners who are holding them up to go through so, so much. I developed such a respect and such a love for them that I just was ignorant about before doing this project.”
Washington has also played in military movies which has changed his own opinion over the last nearly four decades.
“I’ve had the opportunity to make at least a half-dozen films about soldiers and spend a lot of time with them and understand the sacrifices that they make for us to be free,” remarks the director and actor, whose other military-themed films include 1996’s Courage Under Fire.
“When you walk around the Arlington National Cemetery, there are 250,000 headstones, but they’re 450,000 people [who are] wives and daughters and sons,” Washington continues.
“So I love and appreciate what these women and men have done, and the sacrifice that they have made for us to be free. At this point in my career, I am grateful for the opportunity to celebrate them and to lift up real love.”
The emotional finale of A Journal for Jordan takes was filmed on the Arlington National Cemetery grounds, which makes it the first movie to film there since the Sept. 11 attacks. But in real life, King was buried at Evergreen Memorial Park Cemetery in Bedford Hills, Ohio.
That film will also include real-life veterans — however, none of them are soldiers that served alongside King.
“Their presence meant everything because they are what the film is about,” says Canedy. “The story is specifically about my Charles, but it’s about the dignity that soldiers and their families bring to public service. To have them as part of this film was a reminder of that.”
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