Michael B. Jordan wrote Erik Killmonger diaries to help him get into character

Michael B. Jordan revealed he wrote Erik Killmonger diaries while preparing for his role in Black Panther. The diaries, he said, preluded the days before the movie.

There’s a reason Michael B. Jordan played the greatest Marvel villain of all time. He really put a lot of work into preparing for the role. Not in the weird way Jared Leto would send live rats and other creepy things to his castmates as the Joker, but in a much more wholesome way.

Jordan revealed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that he wrote his own Killmonger diaries in preparation for the role.

The diaries, he said, could get pretty dark. That makes sense given, one, Killmonger has a dark past and, two, he is the villain of Black Panther after all.

Part of that dark tone, Jordan attributed, was “not having his mom growing up, in and out of the system, foster care, foster homes and whatnot.” He added: “But it was deep, and it allowed me to kind of go to that place right before a scene. It allowed me to lock in.”

Though his past is filled with dark elements not quite suitable for TV, that’s part of what made Killmonger such a great character. He was one of the few villains to have a compelling backstory. A backstory that really made us feel for him — maybe even cry for him? We saw him as the small kid from Oakland, California, who believed in fairytales. But his beliefs were broken after growing up parentless and just trying to set thing right the best way he could. In the end, we were almost rooting for him, if only his plan wasn’t so twisted.

Not many other villains possessed those layer, making him such a compelling villain. And, those layers also gave Jordan the extra motivation to flex his acting muscles and really put his all into the character. It shows that all that diary writing really paid off.

Black Panther is, unsurprisingly, still in theaters, now available for digital download and will be out on Blu-ray May 15. That’s plenty of options to watch Jordan as Killmonger over and over again.