Jordan Strauss | AP

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By Steve Politi | NJ Advance Media

Michael B. Jordan enters the empty movie theater in downtown Newark with so many assistants, handlers and security guards that I wonder if anyone remembered to turn off the lights back in Hollywood. That's when it hits me: I am here to write the first celebrity profile of my journalism career.

And I am grossly unprepared.

The setting is all wrong, for starters. I should be sipping a cappuccino in a trendy café in SoHo, or watching a fashion shoot in Milan, or sitting in the passenger seat as we zip through the streets of Malibu in a classic Corvette. I should be watching my subject drinking bourbon in the dark corner of a smoky dive bar. I should be more hip. Do hip people still use the word hip?

I'm not about to interview just any old celebrity. This is a Big-Time Movie Star, capital letters required. This is the man that GQ put on its cover this month and declared that he "WILL BE KING," and that was one month after Vanity Fair put him on its cover and chronicled his "move from matinee idol to Hollywood mogul."

This is Killmonger, for crying out loud.

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Marvel Studios

Then, before the panic really sets in, the assistants and the handlers and the security guards disappear. Jordan smiles, shakes my hand and gestures to a front-row seat where we can sit in quiet and talk. I tell him that things have changed just a wee bit for him since the last time I interviewed him.

That was in 2005, when he was a high school senior and the star player for the Arts High basketball team. He was also an actor on the soap opera "All My Children," but mostly, he was a teenager just starting to find his way in a cut-throat profession. Put it this way: The words “king” and “mogul” certainly did not apply.

He let out a big laugh.

“I haven’t changed!” he said. “I’m the same guy!”

The statement seems impossible. How could someone not change when their face is plastered on billboards along Sunset Boulevard? But the proof is all around us. Jordan is in the middle of a grueling publicity tour for his latest movie, "Creed II," with appearances on "The View" and "Good Morning America" and every entertainment show you can name.

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Warner Bros.

The red carpet does not typically get rolled out at the CityPlex 12 on Springfield Avenue for movie premiers. He made sure it did.

“We were in this huge Warner Bros. meeting, and you’ve got 60 execs around and they’re saying, ‘You’re going to Africa, you’re going to the UK, you’re going to Brazil,’” "Creed II" director Steven Caple Jr. said, “and Mike’s like, ‘Can I go to New Jersey?’”

And, because he is a B.T.M.S, those studio execs made it happen. Jordan and his sister, Jamila, invited a few youth groups in Newark, then a couple of high schools and dozens of community leaders, and soon they had enough people to fill three of those 12 theaters. If they kept going, they could have broken every fire code in the city.

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NJ Advance Media

Jordan is not only trying give a few hundred kids a thrill – although, based on the shrieks alone when he enters the building, that mission is accomplished – but show them what is possible. He knows they’ll look at him and see the celebrity from the big screen, but he wants them to remember that he was also a kid from this city once, too.

“I’m at a point in my life where it’s so nonstop and one thing to the next,” he said. “I’m making sure that no one forgets that I’m not forgetting. Sometimes, when you get people that come out of certain places and go on a certain trajectory, they feel like they leave their roots behind. I never want that to be the case.”

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It is easy now, with the benefit of hindsight, to say that he was destined for this.

Even as a child growing up in the city, his sister said, he was always acting. He would act like he didn’t know how to do the dishes to get out of the chores. His bright smile landed him his first job modeling for JC Penny ads, and his grandmother proudly clipped out each one for a scrapbook.

He landed a small part on a "Cosby Show" revival in 1999 and, two years later, in a movie called "Hardball" with Keanu Reeves and Diane Lane. His first big break came when he was just 14 when he played Wallace on the "The Wire," a role put him in one of the most devastating scenes in TV history – "it ain't got to be like this, yo!" – and raised his profile as a young actor on the rise.

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media

Even then, he was still the second most famous Michael Jordan in Hollywood. Jordan opened his mail once to find a $40,000 check from the Screen Actors Guild – the other M.J., of course, had appeared in "Space Jam" with a cartoon cast. That’s how the “B” – his middle name is Bakari – became part of his name for all official acting business.

I met him two years later when he was Reggie Montgomery on “All My Children,” and viewers of the ubiquitous soap opera loved him so much that the role kept getting bigger and bigger. That’s when he let me ride along with him in the backseat of a Nissan Altima as he went from filming in New York City in the morning to suiting up for Arts High in the afternoon.

Now, for his Vanity Fair story, he was driving a $160,000 Acura NSX along the Pacific Coast Highway at 127 mph. I tell his sister that it seems like his ascent from the star on TV shows like "Friday Night Lights" and "Parenthood" to the one of the most in-demand actors on the planet seemed to happen just as fast. She disagrees.

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“We’ve see the highs and the lows. We’ve seen the months when his phone wasn’t ringing,” Jamila Jordan said. “When he first moved out to L.A., things slowed down significantly and he was questioning life as we all do sometimes.

"So yes, there are times where it does seem, 'Holy s---, your billboard is on Sunset Boulevard!' That was a wake up for me. He's on Sunset Boulevard! Those are the moments that trip me out so much, but also, we're humbled because it's been a climb."

The climb took a major step with his performance in the Indie hit Fruitvale Station, and two years later, the skinny kid who barely filled out his basketball jersey was the chiseled Adonis Creed opposite Sylvester Stallone in the latest incarnation of the "Rocky" series. That was his opportunity to create a franchise that impacts a generation.

That was stardom.

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Jordan Strauss | AP

Superstardom?

That was "Black Panther," now the highest-grossing super-hero movie of all time at $1.3 billion. His performance put him in as high demand as actors he idolized like Denzel Washington and Will Smith, the B.T.M.S. who can pick his own roles and map his own legacy. He is 31, just at the beginning of a journey, and even he isn’t sure where it will end.

“The dude is competitive – with himself. He never wants to slack,” Caple said. "He’s always challenging himself. He’s always trying to find a way to beat himself. My first conversation with him was, ‘You just came off the Killmonger, you’re at the height of your career, what’s next for you?’ He talked about creating a legacy.”

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This much he knows for sure: Newark will be a part of that legacy.

He walks into all three of the theaters screening "Creed II" to a wild ovation, and before he can address the second crowd, he has to stop to hug a grandmotherly woman yelling “I love you!” Everyone is standing, and most are recording the moment on their cameras.

“I’m from Newark. You all raised me. To be able to go out on the road and make these movies and be gone for years at time, and be able to come back and feel this love from where you come from, it’s a feeling you can’t really describe,” he told the crowd, and before he could finish the sentence, a loud shriek from a schoolgirl filled the room.

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Barry Wetcher / MGM / W

He can't make his exit without getting mobbed for photos, with an 11th-grader named Lakita Lloyd so overwhelmed by her hug from Jordan that she broke down in sobs. "He's one of the people who made it out and always comes back and – oh my god," she said a minute later, and she was fighting back tears again.

I ask him if the new reality of his celebrity is a burden. He can’t just slip back into his home city anymore. It’s always going to be an event when Michael B. Jordan comes to town, the type of moment that attracts the mayor and the TV cameras.

“You know, getting to where I am, people look to you for, okay, what are you going to do with where you’re at, the space and opportunity that you have?” he said. “I think there is a little bit of pressure that I put on myself. I’m always thinking about what’s next, or how can I elevate things. I’ll have time for fun later.”

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Caple wonders if Jordan will soon take fewer roles in front of the camera to expand his reach behind it. He already has his own production company, Outlier Productions, and is “making moves that are setting him up beyond just Hollywood.” He talked openly in GQ about achieving “generational wealth,” and given that he’s getting Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Killmonger, he might reach that goal sooner than later.

He is already giving back. Jordan wants to set up what his sister calls a “homegrown roots organization” to tap into all the creative talent of the city’s youth. The idea is still taking shape, but for inspiration, he looks to the sport he loved in high school. He looks to LeBron James, who opened the “I Promise School” in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, to benefit at-risk kids from the community.

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Willy Sanjuan | AP

“That’s going to help fix that vicious circle and help (kids get an) education, which leads to everything -- more opportunity, more jobs, everything,” Jordan said. “I want to find out what my version of that here is.

“I can see it. If I can see it, I want to do it.”

Soon, the assistants and the handlers and the security guards are back to escort the B.T.M.S. back to the red carpet. Michael B. Jordan is still moving fast, just like he did when he was a teenager in Newark. But he was right. He is the same guy.

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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.