The Cannes Film Festival may kick off today, but on this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, we’ve got good old-fashioned summer movie season on the brain. Well, sort of. As you’ll hear in my conversation with guest Sam Sanders, host of The Sam Sanders Show on KCRW, sometimes the most fun summer movies are the ones that don’t at all resemble the classic summer blockbuster. Sure, we’re both excited for The Odyssey and Disclosure Day, but we spent even more time talking about Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is, and even the RuPaul-led disaster movie parody Stop! That! Train! And hey, who’s to say those won’t also be blockbusters?
Hear much more from me and Sam in the first half of the episode, and then stick around for my colleague Christopher Rosen’s interview with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, the star of one of the most delightful surprises to air on TV this year, Wonder Man. Take it away, Chris!
Man About Town
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has played all manner of characters since his debut role as a sort of disco prince on Baz Luhrmann’s 2016 show Get Down — including an acrobat in The Greatest Showman, Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale in The Trial of the Chicago 7 and a young Morpheus, the character first played by Laurence Fishburne, in The Matrix Resurrections. But for Disney and Marvel Television’s comedy series Wonder Man, Abdul-Mateen was arguably given his biggest challenge: playing another actor.
“The cool thing is like, it takes the pressure off a little bit because if I’m bad, I just blame it on him,” Abdul-Mateen jokes. “If I’m good, then I take the credit.”
Co-created by Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and Andrew Guest (Community), Wonder Man focuses on Simon Williams (Abdul-Mateen), a struggling actor who harbors dreams of playing the superhero Wonder Man on the big screen. It’s a goal complicated by the fact that Simon himself possesses superpowers, which he hides because a government ban prevents enhanced individuals from working in the entertainment industry.
Despite Williams’ otherworldly abilities, Abdul-Mateen says he related deeply to Simon’s struggle in Wonder Man. “I know what it’s like to want to be seen,” he says. Born in New Orleans, Mateen, 39, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and later attended the Yale School of Drama. But before his big break, he experienced similar feelings of self-doubt that Simon does throughout Wonder Man.
“I’ll let you in on something a little secret: Most actors who already have a level of success feel like it’s still never gonna happen,” he says. “Because we still have dreams. I watched Tom Hanks in a roundtable interview say that, after every job, he feels like he’s never gonna work again.”
Continuing to dream big remains a key part of Abdul-Mateen’s career. In addition to Wonder Man, he’s also starring on the Netflix hit Man on Fire and will appear later this year in David Fincher‘s The Adventures of Cliff Booth, a sequel to Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Abdul-Mateen also has his own production company, House Eleven10, which is “going to allow me to be at the genesis of the stories that I’m involved in,” he says. (House Eleven10 signed a first-look deal with Sony Pictures TV last year.)
Then there’s the current awards race. Abdul-Mateen is a previous Emmy winner for playing Doctor Manhattan on HBO’s acclaimed limited series Watchmen. It was an honor he accepted in a hotel room during the pandemic-impacted 2020 ceremony.
“I was sitting on my couch in Berlin with a camera set up there,” he recalls. If ever given the chance — like, for instance, for Wonder Man, where he’s eligible for comedy lead actor alongside presumed contenders like Martin Short and Jeremy Allen White — Abdul-Mateen would love the opportunity to get another crack at attending the ceremony.
“One of my dreams — and, I’ve never said this out loud in public — is to go to the Emmys just to see what it’s like,” he says. “I’ve still got dreams.” Spoken like a true actor.
