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Who needs drama school when you have the cast ofAll My Children?
According toMichael B. Jordan, getting his start on the long-running soap opera was all the education he needed as an up-and-coming young actor. Now anOscar nomineefor his performance inRyan Coogler'sSinners, Jordan reflected on hisAll My Childrenstint during a recent interview withSirius XM, where he was treated to some kind words for his former soap costar, Susan Lucci.
"He was always so wonderful to work with," Lucci told the outlet during her Feb. 5 visit. "He was prepared, he was on time, he was committed, he was sweet, he was respectful to everyone around him — cast, crew, producers, everybody, you name it. But not nauseously so, you know, not phony baloney. He was authentically who he was."
She added, "He was a genuinely terrific young man."
Jordan received the words with a smile, calling Lucci's praise "sweet" and noting, "I gotta get in touch with her."
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He went on to speak highly of his time on the show, sharing that — although it was not his first role in Hollywood — his teenage tenure onAll My Childrenwas a formative experience.
"That time I spent on that show did so much for me education-wise," he shared, sharing that he had the honor of "learning about the craft" alongside stars like Lucci, Darnell Williams, and Walt Willey.
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"We did 100-plus pages a day," he added. "We did an episode and a half a day, you know what I'm saying? It was a machine. And [for] a kid that never really went to acting classes and never went to acting school or anything like that, that was my education. I learned from them."
By the time he joined the soap, Jordan had already broken out onto the scene as Wallace onThe Wire. ButAll My Childrenmarked another significant stretch of his career, as he stuck with the show for three years across 59 episodes. His role, Reggie Porter Montgomery, was originally played by the lateChadwick Boseman— his futureBlack Panther costar— who was fired after just one week on set for criticizing Reggie's character arc forplaying into racial stereotypes.
Jordan himself has acknowledged that criticism of the character and in 2015, toldGQthat it ended up providing a road map of the kind of roles he wanted to pursue in the future. "No dad, no mom, a f---ing stereotypical black role in a soap opera," he said of Reggies. "And I saw the stereotype, so moving forward I was like, 'Nah, those are the roles I don't want to play.'"
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That said, Jordan has also noted that starring on a soap opened doors he never could've expected. "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,'" he toldPEOPLElast year, adding that several of those conversations ended with invitations for him to come in and read for new projects.
Jordan has come a long way since hisAll My Childrendays, boasting accolades including a Producers Guild Award and SAG win, in addition to a Golden Globe nod and two Emmy nominations.
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