When our site manager Emily emailed over the new Entertainment Weekly cover featuring Michael Bae Jordan and Tessa Thompson, she wrote, “K, you’re not okay, I can feel it.” She was right. I am NOT OKAY. Look at these two perfect alien angel models. I was not okay from the first sentence of the second paragraph of the story accompanying the perfect alien angel model pictures. 

They display an easy rapport that manifests as attentiveness, affirmation, and gentle ribbing, as well as friendly hand-holding, which the costars maintain throughout the chat. 

Tessa Thompson and Michael B Jordan were holding hands throughout their interview. Can someone please send a hearse to pick up my corpse because I am deceased. We know that MBJ and Tessa’s real-life relationship is strictly platonic but their chemistry on screen is anything but. Bianca and Adonis’s love is the heart of the Creed franchise. I saw Creed II last night. I still haven’t recovered. It’s GREAT. Lainey and I are going again on Friday. A big reason why Creed II is great is the chemistry that Tessa Thompson and Michael B Jordan have created through Bianca Taylor and Adonis Creed. A reason why that chemistry succeeds is because of the subtlety and authenticity Tessa brings to Bianca. She’s not just a baby mama in the background. She’s got her own story. She’s got depth. I want to cry just thinking about Bianca and Adonis in this movie together. 

MBJ was asked about the moments in the film that are specifically black (Tessa calls the movie “black as hell”) and he speaks directly to one of the themes we go back to on this site often: specificity is universal. 

“As broad as we want it to be and as accessible to everybody, we try to find moments to make it very specific for us. We deserve that. You know, what black love would be like, what are the things that we would be doing? Like, if she needed help taking out her hair, that’s what I would do. That’s what I did for my sister, my mother, what I would do for my girlfriend, wife. We tried to do it as much as we could.”

He’s referring to one of my all-time favourite movie scenes ever in the first Creed when Adonis is helping Bianca take out her twists aka PORN. 

 

I mentioned earlier today the significance of seeing black women as love interests in pop culture. As important as that is alone, the portrayal of black love is just as, if not more, important. Bianca and Adonis portray a black love in Creed II that is supportive, solid and aspirational. It is #GOALS (are we still saying that?). Those aspects of a relationship are universal and yet, this love is very specific. 

I’ll leave you with the most adorable back-and-forth between Michael and Tessa, who finish each other’s sentences, about whether they’d work together again. 

JORDAN: Me and her working together? No hesitation here.
THOMPSON: Yeah, I would like it. It’d be interesting to see us play something that’s against our dynamic. We have such a lovely [rapport], I would be curious to see us have to be in conflict.
JORDAN: We have a natural kind of chemistry.
THOMPSON: We lean into that pretty easily, I mean, it’s been that way since the moment we met each other. So it would be a good challenge to have to find something…
JORDAN: …to have more tension.

You can read the rest of their EW profile here. GO SEE CREED II.