One of the most popular victories of last week’s Oscars was Michael B. Jordan winning Best Actor for his dual roles of Stack and Smoke Moore in last year’s smash hit horror Sinners (2025). Winning the Oscar with his first nomination, he is only the fifth Black performer to win the Best Actor award in the event’s history.
Jordan’s route to this moment was a storied road. He began his acting career with smaller roles, including a one-episode appearance on The Sopranos (1999) when he was only 12. Later, two specific roles stand out as truly marking his arrival on the acting scene. While still in high school, he starred in the first season of the acclaimed crime show The Wire (2002), playing tragedy-endowed drug dealer Wallace, showing his tenacity onscreen even as a teenager. The second role came a decade later as the lead in indie biopic Fruitvale Station (2013), in which he portrayed Oscar Grant III, a victim of police brutality. This movie marked his first collaboration with director Ryan Coogler, and the two have had a massively successful working relationship — most recently giving us Sinners, landing Coogler an Oscar nomination and Jordan an Oscar win.
For award show fans, this victory had some foreshadowing in the lead-up to the night. On 1 March, Jordan won the Actor Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role. What makes this relevant is that, before Jordan, the man to win this accolade went on to win the respective Academy Award eight out of the last ten times. While Timothée Chalamet might have won more awards, if you paid attention to the patterns, you would’ve seen Jordan’s win coming.
On that note, while Jordan was a well-received winner, he was also an underdog victor. For weeks, Chalamet was many pundits’ favourite to win the Best Actor after years of coming up short. However, in a similar case to the BAFTAs, his 2025 sports movie Marty Supreme failed to win any awards at the Oscars. Some have speculated that Chalamet’s controversial comments dismissing ballet and opera in early March ruffled the feathers of Academy voters, denying him his victory. While it’s impossible to quantify how much support his statement lost him, if any, there were a handful of thinly veiled gags around Chalamet’s comments during the ceremony.
But to suggest Jordan only won because of revenge voting is entirely dismissive of his performance. His double role as the Moore twins demanded total mastery over both characters, making audiences forget that it’s just Jordan. It’s a type of demand you seldom see an actor asked to live up to, yet Jordan sold the illusion flawlessly. Through transcendent musical numbers and a masterful blend of genres, Jordan remained the soul of Sinners and deserves to be remembered as a worthwhile Oscar winner.
Image by Kevin Paul on Openverse.