The Berkeley architecture graduate turned Emmy winner is promoting a civil-rights thriller now on digital, with a David Fincher film next, months after Marvel canceled his series.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II spent the summer absorbing a whiplash that few actors experience in the same month. In July he learned he had earned his second Emmy nomination, for playing the anxious would-be star Simon Williams in Marvel’s “Wonder Man.” A couple of weeks later, Disney reversed its earlier decision to make a second season and canceled the show.
This fall, he is back in front of audiences anyway. “By Any Means,” Elegance Bratton’s civil-rights-era crime thriller, in which Abdul-Mateen stars opposite Mark Wahlberg, arrived on digital platforms on Oct. 20 after a theatrical run that began in early September. A DVD and Blu-ray release is set for Dec. 15.
“I still have great projects coming out, so you know I’m not going to be missing,” he told The Cut. “I’ll be around.”
From Berkeley to City Hall
Before Hollywood, there was Berkeley and San Francisco. Abdul-Mateen, the youngest of six children, was raised in New Orleans’ Magnolia Projects and moved to West Oakland in early adolescence. He attended more than a dozen schools before college, The Cut reported.
At the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the historically Black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, ran hurdles for Cal and studied architecture. Acting began almost by accident. “A [track] teammate of mine, you know, dared me to take an acting class,” he told NPR in August. He later took more classes partly to work on a stutter. “I never stuttered with a script,” he said.
After graduating, he went to work at San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, where, according to The Cut, he ran a program that engaged young people from housing projects the city planned to redevelop. The teenagers learned “how to collect information and give educated feedback on what they wanted to see in their community,” he said.
He took classes at the American Conservatory Theater after work most days. In 2012 he was laid off from the city-planning job, applied to M.F.A. programs and went on to the Yale School of Drama. He won an Emmy for HBO’s “Watchmen” in 2020 and earned a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut.
The ‘Wonder Man’ question
“Wonder Man” premiered on Disney+ in January. Its cancellation came within days of Mahershala Ali’s confirmation that his long-delayed “Blade” film with Marvel was dead. Fans online criticized the studio for dropping two projects led by Black stars, TheWrap reported.
Asked by Vanity Fair whether there was a problem with what was being greenlit, Abdul-Mateen chose his words carefully.
“I think the optics are obvious. If I’m a big business, if I’m Disney, if I’m Marvel, I don’t want to be attached to these optics,” he said. “So it should be a priority to change that narrative and to do what it takes to responsibly change that narrative with quality stories, with quality resources.”
He told the magazine he had been given a reason. “I was told that it had something to do with the viewership numbers,” he said. “I wasn’t told what those numbers were.” He described the decision as one “that we live with and we keep on marching forward.”
When the news first broke, he struck a similar note on Instagram. “That’s life, right? Everything will shake out,” he wrote. “The show worked. And that’s my favorite thing about it.”
To The Cut, he framed the Emmy nomination the same way. “The win was the opportunity to play that character,” he said.
What comes next
In “By Any Means,” Abdul-Mateen plays a young Black FBI agent sent to 1960s Mississippi to investigate a wave of killings targeting civil rights leaders. He is forced to work alongside the Mafia hit man Greg Scarpa, played by Wahlberg. The film is rated R.
Bratton, who directed “The Inspection,” compared him to Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier. “Yahya is the type of actor that should compel the industry to expand its thoughts about what actors like Yahya are capable of and can reasonably portray and what audiences will support,” the director told The Cut.
Earlier this year Abdul-Mateen starred in Netflix’s series “Man on Fire,” which he also produced, playing the former Special Forces operative John Creasy. Next is a role in “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,” David Fincher’s stand-alone sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” starring Brad Pitt.
He is also building his own company, House Eleven10, which he launched in 2021 and named after his childhood home in Oakland. He says he wants to make projects for “an audience of one,” meaning himself.
“I was also practicing being an executive producer,” he said of his recent work, describing it as preparation for the stories he wants to tell next.
Imogen Saltzman covers UC Berkeley alumni in the arts, letters, culture and public life, including the controversies and courtroom fights that put them in the headlines, for the Inquirer’s Berkeley Alumni desk. More from Imogen Saltzman
