Yahya Abdul-Mateen on Man on Fire, Wonder Man and Dreams of Farm Life

Y
ahya Abdul-Mateen II looked like a superhero long before Marvel cast him as one. He’s got an imposing nearly six-foot-three frame, a deep voice, a broad chest, and a blinding white smile. And on the blustery March day in Brooklyn when we meet up for a walk in the park, he’s also got an eight-month-old absolutely kicking his ass. 

Buddy, the eight-month-old in question, is Abdul-Mateen’s new giant schnauzer puppy, who trots in front of us on rain-splattered streets with a comic, tongue-lolled devotion. “He takes his sweet time,” Abdul-Mateen, 39, quips as Buddy sniffs noncommittally and then continues on his way, lunging for bits of stale bread scattered for birds. Buddy’s paws are massive in an ominous way, flashing a growth spurt just over the horizon. His shiny black coat perfectly matches Abdul-Mateen’s ink-black patent trench. The duo look at each other with equal fondness. But the puppy phase isn’t for the weak. 

“It’s still going on, man,” Abdul-Mateen says. “Buddy kickin’ my butt. The night that Wonder Man was coming out, I’m out there with my plastic bags. Buddy don’t care about none of that. And that’s cool. He keeps me humble.” 

While it’s doubtful the level-headed Abdul-Mateen actually needs help keeping his ego in check, his current slate of projects does suggest a man in demand. In January, he made his Marvel debut in the aforementioned Wonder Man as Simon Williams, an earnest and neurotic actor whose big break is complicated by superpowers he can’t control. This month, he stars in Netflix’s TV adaptation of Man of Fire (premiering on April 30) — the 1987 French-Italian action thriller that was remade into a gritty Denzel Washington vehicle in 2004 — playing John Creasy, a haunted Special Forces operative thrown back into the field when a young girl needs his protection. And later this year, he’ll appear in The Adventures of Cliff Booth (a sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood) and the Mark Wahlberg thriller By Any Means. 

Of all these roles, you’d think Abdul-Mateen would find Simon most relatable, but you would be wrong. “I’m nothing like Simon. He’s an overthinker to an unbearable degree,” Abdul-Mateen says emphatically. “I would see Simon coming and go stand on the other side of the set. But I like my mind. I like taking the time to really know how I feel. Most people are scared to spend time with themselves, looking for what is true. Not me.” 

From his eye-catching debut in The Get Down in 2016 to his roles in everything from Us to Aquaman and Watchmen, Abdul-Mateen’s ascent in Hollywood has been driven by his unrelenting command of self. Everything you see onscreen is intentional, no eye twitch or shoulder angle or vocal intonation too insignificant to deserve his utmost attention. It’s how Abdul-Mateen wants it — anything people need to know, he leaves on the proverbial stage. But the more his star rises, compromising his control over the life he leads off-camera, the more prepared Abdul-Mateen is to walk away from acting altogether. 

“The truth is that I want to go find a farm somewhere and walk around with my shoes off,” he says. “I want a little bit of it all. That’s my problem.” 

“At a time where everybody’s trying to get more famous and more followers, something about being very quiet is really appealing to me.” 

ABDUL-MATEEN HAS AN analytical mind, which rears its head when the dreary weather becomes biting and forces us to decamp to a local coffee shop. He seems to deeply contemplate everything: the bottle of sparkling water he orders, which side of the muted-yellow couch to sit on; even, seemingly, which way he wants to cross his legs. As we chat, the only answers that come easy are about topics he doesn’t want to discuss. Where he lives? Off-limits. His dating life? “You have business and then you have my business,” he says. “And dating is my business.” So here’s what he wants people to know: He really wants to fuck off to that farm — the biggest one he can buy. A place where his whole family can live, where he can write and paint and where Buddy can run free. Where he can walk around or go to the grocery store without someone asking him, “What are you doing here?”

“At a time where everybody’s trying to get more famous and more followers and more views, something about being very quiet is really appealing to me,” he says. “When I get my farm, I’m gonna go out at night, lay down, and just look up at the night sky and feel insignificant. Feel how small I am and how large this planet is. Noise and creation don’t go together to me.”

When Abdul-Mateen makes a plan, he follows through. The youngest of six, he split time between Oakland, California, and New Orleans before the family fully committed to Oakland around the time he was in middle school. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in architecture, he spent 10 months working as a liaison in San Francisco’s housing office while taking acting classes on the side for fun. “I had a little bit of a double life,” he says. “And I knew that that particular job was not the final stop.”

Then, following a community-theater production of Twelfth Night (he played Antonio), Abdul-Mateen gave himself three years to make “significant progress” as an actor or go back to school for public policy. Fourteen months later, he was accepted to the Yale School of Drama, which catapulted him to a prominent role in The Get Down, Baz Luhrmann’s $120 million take on the Bronx’s 1970s hip-hop and disco revolutions, on Netflix. “I was very determined,” he says. “I said, ‘What do I have to do?’ and then I went and did it.” 

This practicality has served him well in his acting career. Abdul-Mateen’s Wonder Man co-star Sir Ben Kingsley (he plays Trevor Slattery, Simon’s personal acting guru) found his discipline and professionalism refreshing. “It’s very gratifying that he is as well prepared as I like to be well prepared,” he tells me by phone from London. “[Wonder Man] is a show that has irony, observation, and some wonderful human layers to it. We’re just very polite and respectful of one another. And that was wonderful.” 

It was helpful for Man on Fire, too, as Abdul-Mateen followed a legend into the role of John Creasy. “Denzel’s Creasy — oh, man, I want to be him,” he says, breaking into a grin. “He just makes it so cool. But that’s a part of his brand. I said, ‘Look, if I’m gonna do it, there’s no reason trying to compete with that ghost.’ ”

When viewers meet Creasy in this new iteration, he’s been mired in alcoholism, PTSD, and self-loathing since a disastrous mission took out his entire team. But once he becomes the unlikely guardian of teenaged Poe (Billie Boullet), his scarred emotions have to take a back seat to keep her from catching a bullet. The role required hand-to-hand combat, death-defying car chases, and sniper skills. But for Abdul-Mateen, it was more about Creasy’s inner struggles. “I went looking for a man who was rebuilding himself, who is in well over his head” he says. “[Creasy is] discovering himself and seeing what he’s made of. I’m like that. I’m always seeing what I’m made of. I look at a challenge, and I say, ‘OK, well, here we go. Let’s see.’ ”

THERE’S AN Abdul-Mateen that most of the world will never know, a fact the actor seems to find infinitely amusing. It’s that double life all over again, a duality he revels in. “I find myself doing these serious roles, and people think I’m very serious,” he says. “No one knows that I’m the second-funniest person that I know.” (First place goes to a dear friend from back home named Antoine, who works in education but Abdul-Mateen swears could kill as a stand-up.) But he believes the distinction between those two selves is an integral part of his work. Guarding what he’s really like is clearly something he’s trying to take from important to permanent.

“My goal right now has nothing to do with acting, has nothing to do with the business, has nothing to do with anything that anyone will ever see, really. Right now, my goals are to disappear even further into my own personal life and write and paint and build a family,” he says. (He declines to share what kind of painting he does.) “I’m building something that hopefully everyone, all the people who I love, will be able to participate in and be and be proud of. If I am special, everything I am is because of them. So I’m constantly in a state of thinking about how I can repay that. If I stopped acting, no one who knows me would be surprised.” 

It’s a gorgeous picture: Abdul-Mateen working hard enough to have a farm where his family could live and Buddy could run free and he could pain to his heart’s content. But here’s the friction: Abdul-Mateen wants the farm and the role of a lifetime. He wants those quiet nights and he wants to direct. He’s built a career by constantly setting a goal and then accomplishing it. There’s no doubt that the farm is already more than a fantasy. But what happens after he gets there? What if he gets all that acreage and it’s still not enough? His answer is fast: “I do something else.” 

It’s a flippancy that doesn’t seem to gel with all the hope that’s hanging on this idyllic future. But according to the actor, there’s no fear. After all, he has a plan. And if this one doesn’t pan out, the next step is as easy as writing down another one. 

“I’m not looking to solve anything. I already have it,” he says, eyes gazing far past the small coffee shop we’re huddled in. “I walk outside and I can see the stars from where I live right now. I can feel how large the world is. And how small I am in it. From where I sit, the farm just gets the buildings out the way.”