In “Loki” when Jonathan Majors appears as the mysterious time-controlling villain, He Who Remains, he spends much of his screen time bored, manspreading in his seat and munching on a green apple. He dares both the Tom Hiddleston Loki and the Sophia Di Martino Loki to give him something to get excited about. As the two Lokis are trying to figure out how they can continue to coexist, Majors talks with his mouth full and makes them tea. A little while later he suddenly leaps atop his desk with weird malice. This is clown work. “That’s right,” Majors says as he reflects on those characters, “that’s pure clown.” The clown is the game-changer who speaks truth to power, embodies the best and worst of our nature and does this without fear. Hollywood has long struggled or simply refused to provide good roles for Black actors, confining them to stereotypes, bit parts, magical problem solvers for white people and collateral damage in action and horror flicks. The exceptions have sustained hope that this would eventually change. Majors offers us time and again that missing ingredient in mainstream Hollywood: complex Black subjectivity. His comfort with clowning — which is to say his comfort with the beautiful menace of his body, the quiet chaos of it — is both radical and timely. Inside​ ​the​ ​captivating​ ​mind​ ​of​ ​a new Hollywood star. Photograph by @ryanpfluger.