one of those actors that has leading-man charisma
but also the ability to be a versatile character actor,”
Peele says via email, adding that Abdul-Mateen’s
“tremendous training but also a clear sense of adven-
ture” are what drew him to work with the actor.
After Abdul-Mateen’s run of roles in big-budget
films, he says he’s aiming to showcase a different
side. “I hope people know the simpler me,” he says of
his upcoming work. “Not everything is flashy or big
or shiny or super charismatic.”
This new slate of roles is also in line with his daily
chess strategy. “I’m moving out of the experimen-
tal phase,” he says of the game. He is seeing several
moves ahead in his career as well, thinking about
where he’d like to be in the future. “I’m becoming
more strategic,” he says, “more intentional.”
52 WSJ. MAGAZINE
F. MARTIN RAMIN, STYLING BY ANNE CARDENAS
WHAT’S NEWS
A
CTOR YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II, 33, plays
chess every day, mostly on an app on his
phone. Lately, he’s been adopting a “very
experimental” style. Sometimes, this means
he plays against his own best interests, but in so
doing, he says, certain truths are revealed—about
the game, himself and his ever-expanding limits.
This, as it happens, is a near-perfect metaphor for
his whirlwind acting career. In just a few short years
Abdul-Mateen has taken on a startlingly wide range
of roles, from a disco-dancing hustler in The Get
Down, to a trapeze artist in The Greatest Showman,
to a comic-book super villain in Aquaman. He has also
appeared in the series The Handmaid’s Tale and Black
Mirror, as well as Jordan Peele’s film Us. And he didn’t
even begin acting seriously until about five years ago.
Abdul-Mateen was born in New Orleans and
grew up in Oakland, California. He was the young-
est of six in a household that was both Christian and
Muslim and, he says, a magical place where “every-
thing was always fun, always good.” From age 6, he
dreamed of becoming an architect, and in 2004, he
enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to
do just that. While in school, he worked for the San
Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community
Development, teaching young people from disadvan-
taged neighborhoods the basics of architecture and
urban planning so that they could weigh in on proj-
ects reshaping where they lived.
A string of events occurred that drew Abdul-
Mateen to acting, first as a creative release, then as
a career. At Berkeley, he was performing a skit with
his track team, doing impressions of the coaches and
making everyone crack up. One of his teammates
told him he should look into acting classes, because,
as the teammate put it, they were more like recess—
pure play. Abdul-Mateen dived in, discovering that
the classes were not simply fun but also helpful with
his stutter, which disappeared when he was onstage.
Then, in 2007, his father, Yahya Abdul-Mateen I,
died of cancer at the age of 62. It shook the tightknit
family, particularly its youngest son. Abdul-Mateen
was already rethinking his life when the funding
for his project at the mayor’s office dried up in 2010.
A year later, he was accepted into the Yale School of
Drama. “I’m going to give
myself three years to make
significant progress,” Abdul-
Mateen told himself of acting.
At the end of the three-year
program, he was awarded the
school’s esteemed Herschel
Williams Prize, given to one
student per class. The same
year he graduated, an agent
saw him onstage as King
Leontes in Shakespeare’s The
Winter’s Tale and passed his
name along for an audition for
Baz Luhrmann’s Netflix series
The Get Down. He landed the
role before graduating and
made his deadline.
Ever since, Abdul-Mateen
has been living wherever the
work takes him. In late July,
when we meet in Los A ngeles,
he’s just left Atlanta, where
he filmed Watchmen, Damon
Lindelof’s new and highly
secretive HBO drama (out
October 20). Over a bowl
of oatmeal (his favorite
food) at FOODLAB in West
Hollywood, Abdul-Mateen reflects on his stint in L.A.
a year ago, when he was chasing down role after role.
The word appetite comes to mind. “Now,” he says of
his current state, “I want to change that to gratitude.”
After wrapping the blockbuster Aquaman in 2018,
he told himself, “I need some dirt—I need to actu-
ally touch the dirt.” He was soon flying to Ethiopia
to film Sweetness in the Belly (premiering at this
year’s Toronto International Film Festival), in which
he plays a doctor and love interest opposite Dakota
Fanning. Abdul-Mateen is currently in L.A. to shoot
some additional scenes for the upcoming film All Day
and a Night, which he stars in with Jeffrey Wright.
And then he’s off to Chicago’s Cabrini-Green to film
the lead role in Jordan Peele’s remake of the cult clas-
sic horror flick Candyman, out in June 2020. “He’s
A T E A S E
Louis Vuitton jacket,
Vince T-shirt and
Abdul-Mateen’s own
rings. Styling, Dex
Robinson; grooming,
Shannon Pezzetta. For
details see Sources,
page 134.
Wrap up for
chilly weather in
oversize scarves
that add an extra
layer of texture,
warmth and color.
For details see Sources,
page 134.
LOOMING
LARGE
MONCLER
LOEWE
MICHAEL KORS
COLLECTION
MARNI
LORO PIANA
