“I wasn’t interested in playing an authoritative figure,” Jordan told THR, citing “what’s going on in the world with police and my community.”

“Being a black man, I didn’t want to play somebody who’s an oppressor,” Michael B. Jordan told The Hollywood Reporter during the Drama Actor Roundtable on why he originally turned down his role in HBO’s Fahrenheit 451.

 I just didn’t want that in my head.

Jordan plays Guy Montag in the film, which is based on Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel.