How Sinners Pushed Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan to the Brink

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan have one of those filmmaker-actor partnerships that usually looks effortless from the outside. With their new period horror, 'Sinners,' set in 1930s Mississippi, that trust got stress-tested. Hard. Both of them say the shoot kept throwing curveballs, and even the so-called simple stuff turned into puzzles.

The setup

Jordan plays twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, World War I vets who left Chicago and came back home. That alone is a tightrope act — two different minds, two different bodies, one performer. Layer on top of that a period setting and a horror tone, and you can see why they kept feeling like they were stepping into unknown territory every day.

The day Coogler almost lost it

Coogler told EW there was one shot that nearly broke him: both twins in the same car, bailing at the exact right moment, and disappearing into a thicket — all in one fluid move. It sounds quick on screen; it was anything but on set.

'You remember the day I almost lost my mind — where you guys had to drive the car and get into the bushes? Pulling off that shot was f---ing crazy, because Mike's driving, and we had to do a repeated pass of the car driving up and landing, them getting out of the car with the correct timing, and then interacting with the bush with the correct timing.'

— Ryan Coogler, to EW

How Jordan made two people feel real

For Jordan, the heavy lift was mental as much as physical. When a scene had both brothers, he had to fully dial in one twin's voice and body language, then reset and become the other. To make it work, he rehearsed with his twin double, Percy Bell. Jordan actually directed Bell in rehearsals so that when it came time to shoot, he could respond naturally to the performance he knew he would later replace onscreen.

• Jordan plays both Smoke and Stack, twin WWI vets returning from Chicago.
• Scenes with both brothers required precise timing and camera blocking so they never occupy the same physical space at once.
• For the car-and-bushes gag, the team ran multiple passes to sync the stop, exits, and even how the leaves moved.
• Jordan set the 'rules' of a scene based on which twin started first — that determined camera angles and marks for the second pass.
• He workshopped with twin double Percy Bell, directing Bell's choices so Jordan could later match and react in a way that felt spontaneous on camera.

Bottom line: 'Sinners' asked more of this duo than anything they have done together. And if you see a shot that looks effortless, assume it took a small army, a dozen do-overs, and a director trying not to lose his mind.