"Sinners" star Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler are opening up on making Oscar nominations history.
The actor-director duo sat down for an interview with "Good Morning America's" Chris Connelly, which aired Friday morning, to discuss "Sinners," which gathered a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, and their partnership, which has been over a decade in the making.
Coogler and Jordan recalled meeting in a Starbucks in 2011 to discuss their first joint project, "Fruitvale Station."
"He reassured me. 'Mike, I think you're a movie star. Let's go do this,'" Jordan said Coogler told him at the time.
The pair also discussed the moment they both realized that they had broken Oscars history on Oscar nomination morning.
Jordan said he woke up to missed messages and called his mother. "It felt great. You know, just to kind of hear her happiness and joy and knowing how much that she poured into me."
Coogler said he watched the nominations with his spouse, Zinzi Coogler, who is also nominated as a producer on the film, and the pair celebrated with waffles.
"Sinners" marks the fifth collaboration between the two, a partnership that includes the "Creed" and "Black Panther."
"I'm very reactive as a writer to things around me, to things that inspire me. I internalize it and try to make something that I would want to see," Coogler said of the inspiration for the film, his late uncle James Edmonson.
Coogler also reflected on what makes Jordan such an effective presence on screen.
"There's a magic to Mike that I think like Tom Hanks has, where you see him and you care about him," Coogler said. "As a character, he does everything. So what that gives him is an incredible amount of empathy when he's on the screen," Coogler said, adding that he also has "incredible drive."
Jordan also touched on the effect that sharing a name with one of the greatest athletes of all time has had on his career.
"It made me want to have my own identity. I knew I was going to be competitive at something, I didn't know what it was going to be," said Jordan.
The pair said working together for as many years as they have has allowed them to work in sync.
"We complement one another," said Jordan.
"You kind of know what the other person might need at a particular time to achieve a certain goal," Coogler added.
The 98th Oscars will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 15. The ceremony will air live on ABC and streaming on Hulu at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.
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