Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is not trying to imitate a memory, even if it is a solid one left by the legend that is Denzel Washington.

In Netflix’s new “Man on Fire” series, Mateen steps into a role made classic by Washington, but he does so with a clear understanding that the power of “John Creasy” is not just in what he can do with his hands — it is in what he cannot yet do with his heart. 

Mateen and the series’ director, Steven Caple Jr., sat down with BET Current to discuss the role and what it means for him to play this seemingly broken Black man. “I worked in a different way,” Mateen said, “while giving all due respect to that iconic performance,” he focused instead on what the audience would feel when they met this version of Creasy. “What is the opportunity for me?” 

That discovered emotional center is what gives this series its gravity. Mateen said the role stretched him because it was “demanding” and the production’s isolation helped him sink deeper into the character. Filming in Mexico City and Brazil gave him room to do his own “character exploration” and “really get inside of the skin of this John Creasy character, to see what makes him tick.” 

What he found there was not just a soldier or a protector, but a Black man in conflict with himself. For Mateen, Creasy’s biggest battle was “to allow himself to be loved, allow himself to be helped,” he said. “He could go out of his way to help everybody else. But as soon as someone else came in, he said, ‘no, no, no, that’s too much.’” In Mateen’s hands, Creasy becomes a man who believes he must earn tenderness before he can receive it. That tension — between duty and deserving, violence and vulnerability — is what makes the role feel painfully human. 

That human side is also exactly what Caple wanted to capture. As the director of the first two episodes, Caple said the goal was to establish “the pace and sort of unraveling of what John Creasy is going through,” not only through the writing, but through the way the story feels visually. He described a process of capturing Mateen’s “headspace” on screen and said the production had to trust the actor’s presence enough to know “you don’t need as many lines as you had before.” 

Caple also explained that the series was designed to move from Chicago to Brazil in a way that sets the tone for the whole run, leaving space for other directors to build on what he and Mateen establish early. “Man on Fire” is about that action and revenge, sure, but it is also about a man walking through his own brokenness and trying to keep going.

Mateen described Creasy as “absolutely dangerous, but he’s also absolutely human,” and said the “biggest threat” to him is not the violence outside his body, but “what’s going on in his mind.” Here is a Black man whose strength is undeniable, but whose survival also depends on forgiveness, self-acceptance, and learning how to let love in. 

It is rare to see that kind of emotional complexity held inside an action story with this much scale, but that is what makes Mateen’s performance less of a replacement of Washington and more of a reclamation of the role. He is not chasing Denzel’s shadow, he is finding the soul in the fire.