Two weeks after actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was nominated for an Emmy for his leading performance in the Marvel series Wonder Man, Disney announced the comedy would not return for a second season. Abdul-Mateen says he's still not sure what happened — but he sees a pattern in Marvel canceling Black-led projects.
"When you look at the history of those projects and when you put them all together, there's no way around it," he says. "It does not look good. It does not look like good business. And it looks like it's certainly not favorable to its Black creatives."
In the case of Wonder Man, Abdul-Mateen feels like the show needed "a little bit more time to cook, because I think Black audiences usually find out and gravitate to the niche projects a little slower."
Abdul-Mateen's Wonder Man character is a struggling actor with a secret. He has real superpowers — but if anyone finds out, he won't just lose his career, he will lose his freedom.
Abdul-Mateen's path to acting was a circuitous one. He grew up the youngest of six children in New Orleans and Oakland, then studied architecture at UC Berkeley. After graduating, he worked as a city planner until a layoff sent him to the Yale School of Drama. He booked his first major role in 2015, and was nominated for a Tony for his Broadway debut, and then went on to win an Emmy for his role in the HBO series Watchmen.
And while the cancellation of Wonder Man hurts, he says, "I will ... always come back to the point that I'm so thankful and blessed to have been able to be a part of something that was special, that is special."
As for the upcoming Emmy Awards, there's one actor he's really hoping to cross paths with: "If I meet Steve Carell, then that'll be real dope," he says. "I grew up watching The Office. I've watched every episode so many times." And he's not "too cool" to ask for a photo.
Interview highlights
On his Wonder Man character, Simon, a struggling actor
Simon is an over-thinker. Simon is looking for the traps. I'm looking for opportunities. So I'm different from Simon in that way. So I prepare. And that's the trick. So I do the homework and then I'm not afraid to let go of the homework. The homework is there to support me, not to decide what it is that I'm gonna do. ...
Actors, man. We do all types of things. I was telling stories. I was lying on my resume … back in 2012, talking about all the different skills and accents I could do and things like that. … This was when I was just getting little jobs in the Bay Area, little acting jobs. And I was over-exaggerating. I had maybe played the bongos two times and said, yeah, I could do that. So I put it on my resume. I may have done an accent in class one time. So I said, you know, that wasn't too hard. I put that on my resume, you know, but that's what you got to do. You got to stack the cards in your favor.
On how he found acting by accident in college at Berkeley
A [track] teammate of mine, you know, dared me to take an acting class. … One day we were at practice making fun of the coaches and things like that on the team-building exercise, and I got up in front of everybody and did an impersonation, everybody was laughing. The next day, they were still talking about it, and my teammate, he dared me to take a theater class, and I was looking for an easy class to take, and I auditioned and took the class, and didn't take it seriously, in the sense that I did all the work, but I used to be late to class, and things like that. I wasn't the best representation of what a top student should be. But I always knew my lines, I rehearsed for real. I don't know how present I was, but when it was my turn to work, I always put in the work and I always took the work seriously. ...
After that semester ... I just ran into [the teacher] in the building one day, and she said, "Hey, you're really good. And I hope you take some more classes." And I wasn't necessarily intending to. But I was like, "Oh, I didn't know that. Maybe I will." So the next class that I took, I found something that I thought would be a good opportunity to work on my stutter. And then that just brought me deeper into this world.
On how acting helped his stutter
I didn't stutter when I acted. I never stuttered with a script. I rehearsed the words, so it's just really all muscle memory. ...
Stuttering is frustrating, especially when I'm not around my family, when I am not around people who already have the built-in patience or who can laugh with me. If I were to stutter right now, sometimes you just wouldn't be able to hear anything. I just wouldn't be able to say the word. You may have radio silence for about eight seconds and I'm not even making sounds. Other times I sound like the car engine trying to start and that's when I'm being stubborn and just trying to push it through.
On going to 13 different schools as a kid
There were six of us, so a lot of that sometimes was about trying to find whatever was convenient for my parents and the best fit for our education and things like that. I didn't even notice it. Because there was so much love in my home, you know? So whatever now could be perceived as some type of instability or anything like that ... we were shielded from that, you know? And my parents did a fantastic, fantastic job. And like I say, when we went to different schools, we were looking for a better education.
I think it's made me more observant. I enter into a new environment, sort of quiet, you know, looking around and sort of calculating and doing the math on my surroundings. And then after a little bit, after a while, I take up a little more space. … High school was really where I sort of socially blossomed. Like in the ninth grade, I'd sort of gained my confidence. But what I did have by the ninth grade was my individuality. I was myself.
On growing up in an interfaith home — his mother is Christian, his father converted to Islam
We knew God. We were introduced to God in two different ways, you know. Sometimes we'd go to the mass, sometimes we'd fast for Ramadan. We would pray with my father five times a day. And then other times we'd go to the church and we'd sing in the choir and we had our own little children's choir at home and things like that. What it did for me was it gave me a reverence for God and an appreciation for God and a know-how to get to him in my life. Because I had parents that gave me that example of respecting God.
On his sense of self
The cool thing about having a solid upbringing and going to 13 different schools is that I got a lot of time to develop my own sense of self. ... I like who I am. That's enough for me. So if I can find something interesting to do, who cares what anybody else thinks? I like myself. I like my work in a healthy way. And that gives me enough confidence to go and pursue what it is. That excites me with the opportunities that I say yes to, the opportunities that are in front of me.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakdundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
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