These are thoughts much too heady for a Saturday afternoon off during the holiday season. If I wasn’t here, and there wasn’t a kid’s birthday down the block, what would he be doing to decompress? “Come on, let’s go,” he says. “I’ll show you.”
Five minutes later we’re roaring out of Jordan’s front gate in his fatigue green Ferrari 812 GTS, the latest addition to his three-car collection. Night drives on the highway and long winding roads of his neighborhood are his go-to method of relaxation, he says. As we hug the curves around his block, blasting throwback jams like “Return of the Mack,” Jordan explains that he already has one foot out of the neighborhood. He’s considered selling his house, reasoning that it’s too big for just him.
It isn’t hard to draw a line from that sentiment to the conversation we were just having in his basement, but instead of dwelling on his bachelor status as a form of sacrifice, he looks to the possibilities it offers. “I think I might spend more time traveling in the next upcoming period of my life,” he says. “For leisure. The workaholic part—it’s getting to a point where I feel like I could just get away for a little bit, or just not have the mental pressure from it.”
We drive around some more, with Jordan commenting on some of the “regular” things he likes to do in the area, like go to a farmers market—“For food, n-gga,” he says with a cackle, when I mishear the phrase as “flea markets”—before we end up at his gate again. Jordan invites me back in, even though we’ve already gone over our allotted session time, but instead I let him off the hook. He’s got a birthday party to get to.
As he slides into his seat on Sunday at Granville, Jordan admits he’s not a morning person. “But I have to be. I’m a night owl, I’m up all night, you understand? It’s hard for me to go to sleep at night, because it’s hard to turn the brain off. So that usually leads to wanting to sleep in, but then I always have to get up early, so I don’t really get a chance to do that much.”
That state of affairs seems unlikely to change anytime soon. Sinners’ spring release means that Jordan will be rolling straight from the red carpet to the set of Thomas Crown (MBJ’s Version) in London. The work he’s doing now will ensure that there’s a movie for him to make when he gets there.
“I consider it like cooking,” Jordan says of the preproduction process. “You go to the grocery store, you got to get all your ingredients. I’m in the shopping phase, figuring out what meal I want to make. Then you go back to the house and you’re like, All right, how do I assemble this? ” The invisible stopwatch over his head ticks louder and with more furious intention. He sits back as if slightly dazed, collecting his thoughts and refocusing on the current task at hand. “I thrive off it, but you get moments where it’s like, Whoa. Okay, let me just…. Where am I going? What am I doing? Who am I talking to? Okay, cool.”
