I'm not personally an actor, but one thing that I admire about the profession is the emotional vulnerability to which the most dedicated stars open themselves in their work. Providing an authentic performance in a heavy drama can require going to some dark places, and that kind of internal exploration can leave a person feeling very raw. And when I hear a story like the one about the time that Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone had a hard cry on the set of director Ryan Coogler's Creed, my admiration is really only enhanced.
Stallone personally shared the story recently as part of a career retrospective video recorded for GQ. He looks back at a number of performances, including his time in the Rambo movies and the Expendables franchise, but in the segment during which he discusses his long time playing Rocky Balboa, he talks about the series entering a new era with Creed and a powerful moment that he shared with co-star Michael B. Jordan. Said the actor,
I remember we did a scene when Rocky’s training with [Adonis]. I’m holding the pad and, all of a sudden, I start to dry heave and break down and I realize I have something terribly wrong with me. And I’m going, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ It triggered him, and he had five minutes of uncontrollable crying. The camera wasn’t even rolling.
Reflecting on the film, it's likely that Stallone is referencing a sequence toward the middle of Creed when Rocky and Michael B. Jordan's Adonis are sparring in a ring late one night. Things seem fine at first, but then Rocky gets dizzy and runs to the ropes to vomit in a bucket. In a following scene, the boxing legend is taken to a hospital and diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (there was talk at one point about Rocky dying in the movie, but Stallone had that idea nixed).
Apparently the filming of the sequence was a lot to take on for the actors, and they both had a shared bawling session at what was the end of the production day. Stallone added,
So it had touched into something in his own past that was very, very profound, and then we just sat there like two people bawling. But it’s not even in the movie. We literally [cried] for four, five minutes, and then we had to cut. That was the end of the day, we couldn’t go back to it anymore. Now, I don’t know what caused that, and I still don’t to this day, but we both had breakdowns.
I kind of hope that whatever was the root "cause" of the moment never comes out. It sounds like the two stars shared a very personal moment together, and I feel it's worth appreciating their powerful emotional expression by itself without digging into it further.
In addition to being a lovely story about two beloved stars, this is also a nice reminder of just how great a movie Creed is. The film is actually celebrating its tenth anniversary next month (how time flies!), and if you're feeling game for a rewatch, it's not presently available to stream from any subscription service, but it is available for digital rental and purchase, and it has been released on both 4K UHD and Blu-ray.
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