Michael B. Jordan's performance in his latest movie Just Mercy is so powerful, the extras gave him a standing ovation after one scene. Just Mercy tells the story of Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who spent over three decades fighting for legal reform and social justice for marginalised people. Jordan plays a young Stevenson and Jamie Foxx stars alongside as a death-row inmate who was convicted of murdering a white woman based on insubstantial testimony.
Talking to Jimmy Fallon, Jamie Foxx described the on-set reaction when Michael B. Jordan delivered an impassioned courtroom speech to defend Foxx's character, Walter "Johnny D." McMillian.
"He wanted to get it so right, at one point he was having trouble, fumbled a couple of lines, he said 'my bad,'" Foxx explained, before describing how he told Jordan that he didn't need to apologise for anything and to take as long as he needed to get the scene right. "That boy went away and came back and he did the speech, and the extras gave him a standing ovation, people were in tears."
Jordan said after the scene he went to the back of the courthouse where they'd been filming and cried. "I looked at my phone, he [Foxx] had written me a paragraph speech just telling me how good he thought I did," Jordan added. "It meant the world, he's been like a big brother of mine for a long time."
