Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I think that it’s difficult to tell the truth, to tell the absolute truth. I really do. Every once in a while, you line it up so that you experience a moment of truth. And I just want to do that five times in my career. I just want to have five moments in my career. Four… And five is me being greedy.
Joe Skinner: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s ultimate goal as an actor is to tell the truth. And this year, he was in pursuit of that truth in Topdog/Underdog. It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning play that just wrapped up its first Broadway revival. It’s writer, Suzan-Lori Parks, talked to us on this podcast back in 2017, and explained the story of the play’s two brothers:
Suzan-Lori Parks: Two brothers, they don’t get along. Their names are Lincoln and Booth. Their father named them Lincoln and Booth as a joke.
Joe Skinner: The older brother, Lincoln, was the master of this card game called Three-card Monte – it’s a scam where the dealer always wins.
Suzan-Lori Parks: He knows it’s going to be the death of him.
Joe Skinner: Yahya plays Booth, the younger brother who begs Lincoln to teach him how to play.
Suzan-Lori Parks: And Booth is not really good at anything. Well he’s really good at shoplifting. But other than that he’s not really good at anything. Finally, Lincoln does teach him the cards, and it’s a real lesson for everybody. (laughs) All my plays, yeah, they might have violence in them, but they also have a lot of jokes. It’s what happens when you come close to the bone, and when you’re in a real place, there is humor right along with despair.
Joe Skinner: Topdog/Underdog debuted on Broadway in 2002. Booth has been played by both Don Cheadle and Mos Def – and now, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, with big shoes to fill.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: If I could tell the truth one time in this play, and that became my pursuit, that became my objective for my own personal self, was to go on that stage, and in one of the most important moments or one of the moments that, that the truth absolutely matters, to tell the truth.
Joe Skinner: I’m Joe Skinner, and this is American Masters: Creative Spark. In each episode, we bring you the story of how artists bring their creative work to life. In today’s episode, I spoke to Yahya Abdul-Mateen II about how he prepared for his role in Topdog/Underdog, and how that performance evolved over the course of the show’s run.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: Booth is young at heart and I was 21. I was young and I had all of my life ahead of me. Big dreams for myself.
Joe Skinner: The first time Yahya played Booth was when he was back in college at UC Berkeley – 15 years ago.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I resonated with Booth also because of the language. He spoke in some ways in the way that I speak. He definitely spoke in the way that my family members and cousins and everyone else speaks on an everyday vernacular. And he was ambitious. He had a smart mouth. He could curse. He was witty. He talks [censored], you know, he was a [censored] talker, and I’m that way. I was that way with my big brother pushing the buttons and things like that. So I just played myself for Booth one for one. So there was no process. It was just all charisma and instinct. It was the first character who I had performed in contemporary work that felt like myself, that felt like something that I knew. So I was right at home. It made me feel seen. It gave me a space to perform and to share those things.
Joe Skinner: Yahya wasn’t in school for theater – just taking a drama class for fun while pursuing a degree in architecture. But he loved to perform, and kept taking acting classes at night during his career as a city planner. When he was laid off from that city planning job at 27, he decided to give his semi-secret acting hobby a try… for real. He went to the Yale School of Drama to get a formal acting education. Yahya’s first big break was in the Netflix series The Get Down in 2016. And he’s had a busy couple of years since then, starring as the super villain Black Manta in DC’s Aquaman.
Archival Clip: I’ll make you a deal. I won’t tell you how to captain, and you won’t tell me how to pirate.
Joe Skinner: And as Cal Abar in HBO’s Watchmen series..
Archival Clip: Before Uncle Joe was born, he was nowhere, didn’t exist. Then he was a baby. Then he was a child. Then he was an adult. Then he died. Now he’s nowhere, again.
Joe Skinner: And as Morpheus in the new Matrix movie – making Keanu Reeves take the infamous red pill once again.
Archival Clip: He hasn’t taken the pill. What? There’s no time… I know, I know, he’s having a moment.
Joe Skinner: His career shot out like a rocket. But in 2022, he decided to slow down and take a break.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I got to a point where coming out of the pandemic and I’ve done a couple superhero things back to back and I was away from home for a long time, and so I just said, you know, I’m just gonna say no until the thing finds me that I just know is for me, that I know absolutely is for me, that’s undeniable. I was waiting for my movie. I was waiting for that movie, and I said no, for about nine months. And then this play came in my inbox and I said, damn, I’m gonna go do a play.
Joe Skinner: Not just any play, but the same play he did back at UC Berkeley. And the same character, too, the younger brother Booth. It was his first time back on stage since drama school. For Yahya, getting ready to play Booth again meant bringing all the life experiences he’s had since that performance into the character.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: There’s stakes now. You know, there were no stakes when I was 21 and thinking about trying to be someone in the world, trying to make my mark, it was just, of course it was gonna happen. I’m young, I’ve got the energy, it’s just a matter of time, I’ve gotta go out and get it. But as a 35 year old, 36 year old, this is me in Booth’s shoes. I’m thinking about love. I’m thinking about family. And I don’t want to be alone. I wasn’t thinking about those things 15 years ago. He’s a man who is realizing that he’s never gonna have a good quality of life in terms of love, in terms of financial stability, in terms of reuniting with his family. And I’m always wearing those stakes now, and I’m very happy to be, you know, to have gone on that exploration because it showed my maturity as a person, as a man, and as an actor, because there’s a way to do the Booth role where it’s just all charisma. There’s just nothing but charisma, just jumping off the page and then a boy gets hurt in the end. It’s a lot of fun getting into the head of this play, man. In this character.
Joe Skinner: So, you’re doing all this foundational thinking around the character in a way you couldn’t before. With all of that in mind, are you able to then be more present in the character on-stage?
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: Yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure. I just get to go out there and play, which was a huge part of my training. You know, people ask a lot of the time, you know, what I learned at the Yale School of Drama. Kid you not: breathing and talking and listening, which is very difficult because we do it every day. And then when we start acting, a lot of times we start thinking. It’s like, no, stop thinking, just be there and know that you’re enough, and you’ve done all the work. So just go and breathe and be present.
Drop your shoulders, soften your eyes, open your mouth, relax your knees. Learn the triggers. The way the brain will eventually work is that the body will make an observation. Then the body will release without distracting you from the task. That allows us to go up there on stage and play a game.
Joe Skinner: Being able to be playful and in the moment on stage is something Yahya sets himself up to be able to do. In particular, through the way he learns his lines.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: Learning the lines is the very last thing that I do. I learn and I know what I’m saying, what I want, what I’m going after, and that becomes the process of learning the lines, by learning what I want and learning what I’m saying and understanding. By the time I get to memorization, I kind of already know it because I’ve been working on understanding what I want. Also, not learning my lines while sitting down. I don’t learn my lines at the breakfast table, at the dinner table, or in the bed. I’m always crawling on all fours while I’m learning my lines or I’m walking in super slow motion because I’m not learning lines, I’m learning actions and I’m learning thoughts and I’m learning desires. And so those things come from the body.
Those are some technical things that I would’ve gotten at school that are extremely helpful for a play like Topdog/Underdog because it’s such a physical play. You know, Suzan-Lori, she says that she writes about people doing things. It’s not a leisure play, it’s not a relaxing play. The characters are always doing something. They have that energy, they have that angst, and it’s nice to be able to employ a process that asks of the actor to do the same in the process of learning those characters.
Joe Skinner: I spoke with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II while he was still very much in the middle of his critically praised performance as Booth in Topdog/Underdog. His excitement in his pursuit of understanding the character was palpable. It felt like, for him, the process was the point.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: The most important thing was that we made room and that we made it safe for every process to be valid.
Joe Skinner: Yahya shared the stage in the show with Corey Hawkins as his older brother, Lincoln. It’s a two-hander, meaning they’re the only two characters in the play – so their process had to be collaborative.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: We’re all looking for the same result. How we get there, you know, we get there in different ways and sometimes we get there in the same way. It is nice to be able to share a vocabulary. I think we both have the philosophy, and appreciate the philosophy, of just playing, experimenting, but then also the importance of being able to just be where you are and to see what happens from that. It was a very complementary process. I think we’re both very, very malleable and also very sturdy in our own practice and craft. And it was a very complementary process for sure.
Joe Skinner: Yahya’s performance of Booth continued to grow over the run of the show. He’s always in search of that ultimate goal of telling the truth on stage.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I think if you’re a very curious actor, with really good material, you can get bored by doing the same thing. It’s gonna be a long road if I stop getting curious. And something happened around November, where I sort of began to think of the play, not as a performance, but more as a art exhibit, and I said, okay, well I’m gonna play this as if this is taking place in a museum and this piece of art is the exhibit in the museum. And so what that allowed me to do is to just sort of abandon the audience, and to allow myself to be inside of that room as Booth with Corey as Lincoln. And just looking for the truth. And when I began doing that, really beautiful thing started to happen. Oh my god. Just about two weeks ago, I learned that Booth was afraid of his big brother, and there’s a bully complex that’s happening in the room, and that’s a new thing. And so there’s a part of the Booth that I’m playing now that knows that he has to stand up to the bully, even though he knows that he can’t beat him.
But I’m gonna do it because I have to prove this to myself that I can do it, because I never have, and I’m terrified. I’m terrified. And I think he knows it, but I’m not gonna let him know that I know it. I’ve just found that in order to keep it interesting, I have to stay curious and always be in search of the truth.
Joe Skinner: It reminds me of therapy, that idea of constant reinvestigation. Sounds like that’s a little bit what you’re doing with this character.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: Absolutely. Absolutely. Just listening. Just dare to listen. We’ve done all the work. And so, you know, my teacher, in graduate school, she would say, uh, her name is Evan Yionoulis, she would say, “hold on tightly, let go lightly.” And I was like, what does that mean? What does that mean? Hold on, tightly let go lightly. And it finally clicked. You hold on tightly to the work that you’ve done, but you let go in a way that allows room for malleability. It allows room for inspiration. Some people would say, crack the door open to leave room for God to come in. So a lot of times, the success of the night for us, it falls on our willingness to just let go and to let the characters do the work. To get out of the way.
Joe Skinner: I went to see the show ahead of this interview, and it’s one thing to read all the critical praise, but it’s another to see a rapturous audience fully engaged with a performance. Lots of laughs, but also people shouting at the stage in shock. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it on the Broadway stage. It felt like we were really in Booth’s bedroom with him.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: There’s a Three-card Monte hustle that’s going on at the center of this play. But myself as an actor, myself and Corey and Lincoln and Booth are also doing a Three-card Monte hustle on the audience because we give them love, we give them humor, we give them, funny physicality, we give them a good time, we welcome them into our house and we get them comfortable. And we get them to like us.We get them to root for us. And then, we lead them all the way down to tragedy.
Joe Skinner: To Suzan-Lori Parks’ credit, the show runs through the full spectrum of emotions. It’s in this experience that Yahya continued his search for truth.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: I did one night, I did it one night. I told the truth. It felt good. I was proud, you know? And every night I try and that’s the joy of it all. It’s really about the attempt. And, once I did it, then I knew that I could walk away from the play eventually. You know, had I not told the truth at least once, then I think I would’ve… I’d still be working on it, and it would still be chasing me. But, I was able to tell the truth once. And now I have no regrets. You know, now I have no regrets. This has been a beautiful experience. And, so that’s my pursuit every night when I go on stage, I just try to tell the truth – once. And I think some nights, we both get pretty damn close, and I think that’s what it’s all about.
