Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Is Ready to Blow Your Mind

Rare is the seer of tomorrows. Yet Morpheus embodies the role deftly. In the Matrix films, starved for salvation, he is the Black prophet of Zion's freedom quest. A defender of humanity's legacy. A judicious captain with the disposition of a Buddhist monk. He oozes sophisticated cool—thanks, in large part, to Laurence Fishburne's textured portrayal of him in the original trilogy. Named for the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus is the messenger of better days, of a more imaginative future. Without him, escape from the Wachowskis' world of code and chaos looks hopeless. The machines ultimately win; the Matrix rewrites itself. But through Morpheus' eyes, deliverance is possible.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is the ideal actor to take up Fishburne's mantle in The Matrix Resurrections: He's a scene-stealer with an uncanny knack for stirring something deep inside the viewer. Born in New Orleans, the 35-year-old ditched a career in architecture to pursue Hollywood, graduating from the Yale School of Drama. Since then, he has played a 1970s Bronx gangster (The Get Down), the supervillain Black Manta (Aquaman), the genius god-being Doctor Manhattan (Watchmen)—for which he won an Emmy in 2020—and Black revolutionary Bobby Seale (The Trial of the Chicago 7). Earlier this year, he transformed into Candyman for Nia DaCosta's slasher remake, a horror flick that doubled as a savvy social commentary on the ways cultural theft can make monsters out of us. Abdul-Mateen infused each of those characters, many of whom were well ingrained in the pop-cultural canon already, with a profound, mesmerizing depth.

But it's never just about the role, Abdul-Mateen says. Every part is a chance to present an uncompromising vision. Because no Black actor is their character alone. When an actor—especially a Black one—is able to bring the kind of full-scale humanness to a role that opens a door into the soul, it becomes a gateway to something even more extraordinary. It becomes a gateway to a future for Hollywood that reflects Black stories and Black storytellers as they should be reflected.

Ultimately, it's about foresight. The need for “images of tomorrow,” as sci-fi author Samuel Delany put it in 1978, remains paramount. At the time, Delany was calling for a Blacker future in fiction. A queerer future. One such image arrived 21 years later, with The Matrix. Now, in Abdul-Mateen, we have another. He's helping to usher in a prosperous new era for Black actors that affords them more autonomy, power, and ownership in Hollywood. When we chat—first by Zoom and then, after the connection inevitably glitches out, by phone—he is zipping through the mid-afternoon streets of London in the back seat of a taxi. It's early fall. He's on the move, dashing from one place to the next. But he's eager to talk. He connects. He plugs in. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is ready to offer the truth, nothing more.

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WIRED: What's your first memory of the original Matrix? 

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I might have been 14. I remember trying to lean back, trying to do that move where I'm dodging bullets—trying to grow a hundred arms and move so fast and so slow that I turned into multiple people.

Bullet time. Easily one of the coolest moments in the film. 

For me, it was about what could be possible in my own imagination, the different ways I could now go outside and fight, the different superpowers I could imagine I had.

Neo could only do that because he was in a virtual world, of course—a “neural interactive simulation,” as Morpheus puts it. Does reality ever feel unreal to you? 

[Laughs.] Yeah, man. We just came out of a goddamn pandemic. One of the things that makes reality seem a bit strange—like there's a shift in the universe—is change.

What's an example? 

One is the way we relate to technology, the way we communicate with other people, the feeling that we can be in multiple places at one time. It opened up this other conversation that people are having about what is real and what is not real, what is necessary in order to experience reality. The more that we have those conversations, the more susceptible we become to the possibility that it might all be a dream or that it might all be a simulation or an alternate reality.

Do you think it's possible to make things meaningful, to live a meaningful life, if the world doesn't feel all that real? 

Absolutely. It's not only possible but important to find meaning in everything. You know, a lot of times it takes something, a dream world or a different type of experience, in order to propel you forward into your own quote-unquote “real world.” As long as the mind and heart are open, then you'll find meaning in whatever world your mind allows you to be in.

Sounds like you have complicated views about technology. 

I'm a hypocrite. I love it when it helps me, and I hate it when it doesn't. Social media, that's an ultimate reality all on its own. It's a real universe. People spend as much time there—it's funny I say “there,” because it turns it into a real location—as they do in the real world.

Is that healthy? 

You have to respect that reality. One doesn't want to be left behind, but one also doesn't want to be so consumed by that other world, by the world of technology, that you become stagnant in this one. A lot of things still matter in this world—touch and relationships and real conversation and discomfort. Technology is designed toward convenience. It's designed to make things easier, to make life a bit more comfortable. But we need discomfort. We need discomfort in order to grow.

In some ways, that's the message of the original Matrix trilogy. The Wachowskis showed us a largely non-white world of people who, despite being oppressed, are fighting for a better tomorrow. People who don't want to be defined by how the status quo defines them. What's your interpretation of the future they were trying to envision?

I do understand those allegories. For myself, I saw messages about working-class people. I saw messages about people who don't exercise the autonomy they actually have in life. People who are unknowingly stuck on the conveyor belt, whose lives are being lived for them rather than truly being free.

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You mention autonomy. What does that word mean to you, as a Black artist? 

It means the whole idea of crossover goes out the window. There's an idea—and it's not accepted by everybody—that to really be successful in Hollywood, you need to appease a non-Black market. When you do that, you compromise some of your cultural practices and beliefs. You compromise a part of yourself. When the artist is completely autonomous—when the Black artist is autonomous—then the Black artist is free from that need of acceptance, and what we bring to the table, what we desire, who we are culturally, the way we speak, the music that we listen to, the way we dress, our clothes, our style, the stories that we decide to tell in the way that we decide to tell them—they're automatically the norm. They're automatically accepted. It's only about quality. It's not about finding a large audience to relate to. It's not about making people comfortable. It's not about sitting inside of a box. It's not about conforming. That's what autonomy looks like.

Is that the ultimate goal for you? 

From the beginning of my career, I've focused on freedom—freedom of expression and artistic freedom. It takes courage. It takes a rebellious spirit. It takes some fortitude, but it also takes the support of people around you to uphold and to trust that vision.

Your biggest roles have all been in genre—Black Manta, Doctor Manhattan, Candyman. These are characters we know, characters who have history and backstories. How were you able to make them your own? 

You have to relate to the character in a meaningful way. You have to have a reason to say yes to going on that journey that's deeper than the popularity of the character. You can't just do it because it's Morpheus or because it's Doctor Manhattan or Black Manta. That's not going to get you far enough. You find your way in, and you make it your own by having a perspective.

So how do you measure the success of a role, then? 

By the time I see or hear anything, I already know how I feel about my work. That's more than enough for me.

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Do you feel any responsibility as a Black actor? 

My responsibility is to myself. One thing about where I'm at right now is that I want to have the freedom to do what I want to do, in the way I want to do it. It's interesting, you know, the idea of how Lana [Wachowski] works. That's really the dream—to be able to work how she works.

Talk to me about working with Lana on the new film. 

Lana's dope. She's very family-oriented. I probably heard that word more than anything over the course of the film.

What did she mean by it? 

She's talking about the family—that includes the actors, that includes the crew, everybody from the top down. She was really all about making sure that this was a family experience. Also, she has a strong sense of vision. She's the only director I've ever worked with who will grab the camera from the DP or from the camera operator and film something herself. She was right there, damn near inside of the movie. She really put her muscle and sweat into it. And talk about somebody who is just whip-smart. To be able to create the world of The Matrix, but then to come back 20 years later and make it relevant to her personal story and her journey, and to allow that to be universal, is something that I appreciated. To me, it seems as though she makes her art for an audience of one, which is herself, and then trusts that there will be an appetite for it.

That seems like the purest form of creative expression. 

She's not a conformist. Especially with big studio films, a lot of times there's a lot of asks and places to compromise. But her approach was really, really inspiring in terms of seeing an artist take their destiny into their own hands, so to speak.

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Do you believe we are in charge of our destinies? In one sense, the whole premise of The Matrix suggests otherwise. 

We have to be. But at the same time, it's important to know you can't control everything. My acting teacher, Evan Yionoulis, said, “Hold on tightly, let go lightly.” It's a balance of controlling what you can control and then gracefully allowing the universe to do its job. It takes a bit of self-reflection and education and belief in oneself. That's a little bit of where I am—probably holding onto the reins very tightly right now. Not really trusting the “let go” part. [Laughs.] But I think that's youth and stubbornness. I believe I'm on my way.

Another takeaway from the Matrix franchise is that all worlds are not as fixed as we think. What might a more perfect world look like for Black actors? 

The groundwork has been done. It's been laid for many years, and now it's being financially rewarded. We just have to keep doing that. Keep on creating those spaces. And then it'll branch outside of acting, and you'll see opportunities in writing and directing. You'll start to see it in the wardrobe department, in the hair and makeup department. Accessibility won't be such an issue. Relatability on large projects won't be such an issue. We need more people to continue to be bold and to stick to their guns.

What do you see as your role in this transformation? 

It's all about honesty. That's really what I'm after right now: creating honest moments, honest storytelling. I don't think much about legacy. I mean, I do. For sure, I do. But what's going to get me to a place where I'm satisfied with my legacy—with what my legacy says—is if I stay true to myself. If I work with people who I want to go and have a drink with. If I tell stories about people who look like me, stories about people who might have stopped by at my house when I was growing up. If I bring my full self to my work, then I think my work will speak for itself.

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You mentioned grace earlier. Do you think the way you approach your craft is a matter of understanding where to allow for grace? 

You have to. Otherwise you drive yourself crazy. An artist has to learn to be both brutal and kind. The brutal is what's going to keep you up at night and what's going to introduce you to honest self-critique. Grace is going to tell you, “OK, you did a good job, it's time to get some rest.” You need a bit of both. And if you want to do anything that's worth watching—if you want to have some real humanity in your work—then you need grace. It won't always be my responsibility to play someone who was kind and did great things in life. Sometimes onscreen, you have to do things that you wouldn't do in your own life. To do that well, you have to have a sense of grace for that character, an understanding and an idea that hopefully—if the page or the script leans that way—you're not just playing pure evil.

Did playing Morpheus reveal anything to you about yourself as an actor, or as a Black man, that surprised you? 

No.

Why's that? 

I don't even want to bullshit you. It was a good experience to go in and to play this character, to breathe life into him. To pick up the reins and step into something that is seen as iconic. But in terms of my identity as a Black man, it tends to be rooted in other things. And that wasn't really one of the ways that I was inspired on this project. It was cool as fuck, though.

More from WIRED's special series on the impact of the Matrix franchise—and the future of reality

Styling by Jan-Michael Quammie. Styling assistance by Kevin Lanoy. Grooming by Giselle Ali using Pat McGrath. Clothes by Thom Browne (top portrait) and Vetements (close-up portrait); boots by Alexander McQueen; sunglasses by Prada. 

This article appears in the December 2021/January 2022 issue. Subscribe now.

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