It looks like Idris Elba won’t be playing Michael Jordan in his biopic.
During an interview with Complex, actor Idris Elba opened up about asking MICHAEL JORDAN face-to-face if he could one day portray him. “So Jordan had these wicked getaways in the Bahamas, you know what I’m saying? He would invite a bunch of people out. I think me and Gabrielle Union went out, we was promoting a movie, I think it might have been Daddy’s Little Girls and you know, I was gassed to be at Jordan Weekend.”
He goes on to say he met Jordan “once or twice,” but it was “just to say hello.” Elba added, “I even said to him one time, ‘I want to play you.’ He was like, ’Hm, I’m not ready yet.’… I was dead serious.”
“In my head, playing Jordan wouldn’t be about playing the basketball player, it was about the businessman. He is a very astute businessman, really smart. And his work as a philanthropist is unspoken, but people don’t understand the work. He cares, he does a lot of work. So that’s where I was hinting at. I wanna play Jordan, I’m doing that. He was like, ‘I’m not ready for that story yet.’”
Jordan didn’t exactly say no- so, that means there is still some hope that Idris would be able to play that role. Idris has had a 20 year acting career, and is still going strong. Would you want to see him portray Jordan?
Watch the interview below.