How Nadji Jeter Became Miles Morales in Marvel's 'Spider-Man' 🕷

When you're playing Miles Morales,

you're doing a lot of physicality.

So whether it's on the mocap stage, I'm giving my all,

or whether it's in the booth, I'm actually swinging,

I'm actually punching,

and I'm actually doing all the motions

that are required into Miles.

When you hear all those hard breaths

and tones in the game, those are real.

[screen whooshes] Hey, what's going on you guys?

I'm Nadji Jeter, and this is how I became Miles Morales

in Marvel's Spider-Man.

[intense music]

[static buzzes]

[intense music]

[static buzzes]

Character Miles Morales came about in my life

in I want to say 2017,

but I was maybe around 19, 18 years old, playing Miles

as a 13-year-old on Disney XD.

It's me.

[triumphant music]

Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

PlayStation called me over saying,

Hey, we're doing a reading for Spider-Man,

do you want to join?

And I said heck yeah.

I wanna say it wasn't too long of an audition.

We had fun.

It was Yuri and I, I believe it was the reveal,

me telling him something is changing,

and me not knowing

that my man Pete already had the same situation going on.

He kind of came at it as a big bro,

thought it was puberty.

All starts in the pituitary glance.

Nope, nope, mmm-mm, mm-mm.

No, [laughs], that's not what I'm talking about.

What's so crazy, Yuri was actually on that TV show

with me on Disney XD.

Well, the relationship between Pete and Miles man,

it's a heartfelt one 'cause that's big bro.

And he's big bro on and off camera.

He kind of guides me with just advice

and just acting skills that he has incorporated for Pete

to have with the Spider-Man in Miles.

[static buzzes]

[jazzy music]

[static buzzes]

My performance in video games, man,

starting off with The Last of Us,

I was a kid, playing Sam,

I was maybe like 13 or 14,

stepping into the mocap world as a kid.

That was shocking.

What if they're trapped in there without

any control of their body?

I'm scared of that happening to me.

I remember when they flew me to Serbia

and they had to scan my face, I kind of felt like, okay,

this is gonna be, it's gonna be something different.

Getting your face scanned is crazy.

You know, you're sitting in a chair,

and you have maybe like 90 cameras around you in a sphere.

You're just sitting there and then you're just,

they're flashing away,

and you're making different facial expressions

here and there.

So that, going through that was mind blowing.

Think he was right.

The friend picked up a signal from this satellite.

Let's see what we're working with.

Miles is way smarter than me, I'll tell you that.

Miles is a tech genius,

and he knows what he's doing when it comes

to the science and the arts.

So man, Miles is ahead of his time

when it comes to his mentality.

Miles and I have a strong similar connection

of our background,

just little situations that we go through.

He's lost his father, I was raised by a single mom.

Just took from my personal experiences when it came

to emotion and losses that, you know, he has to go through.

I'm also Jamaican, his cultural background too,

you know, with his mom and, is amazing.

So, and then shout out to Jackie.

I love you Mama.

[static buzzes]

[intense music]

[static buzzes]

When you're playing Miles Morales,

you're doing a lot of physicality.

So whether it's on the mocap stage, I'm giving my all,

or whether it's in the booth, I'm actually swinging.

I'm actually punching,

and I'm actually doing all the motions

that are required into Miles.

When you hear all those hard breaths

and tones in the game, those are real.

[Miles grunting]

[web shooting]

For the training of Miles,

we had a pamphlet that we had to go through

and it was of different poses.

You had the aggro pose, you had the idle pose,

and then you had the perch pose,

they gave me some homework and I went home with it,

and tried to do all the stretches that I could possible.

But we have a great stunt team as well.

'Cause you know, when you have a camera

attached to your face, there's only so much you can do.

So we did do a couple of flips

and some tricks at the Parkour Studios.

Couldn't go too much, too much with it,

with the camera attached to your face.

But it's fun man, when you really get into it,

you get to be a big kid again.

[electronic music]

[static buzzes]

The script for an open world is, you know,

like a typical film script.

We don't really change too much.

We try to keep everything just, you know, straightforward.

We do a full table read when we first start,

and then we kind of jump into it.

We have our cinematic scenes

where we are doing the physicality in it

and we're acting it out.

We have our tables, we have our chairs,

we have our cars, and we have the open world.

And then we get in the booth

and we track some of those scenes,

or we add on to certain things

that have been filmed already.

Well, I'm a sound effects guy, you know, I need my sounds,

I need my imagination to be on point.

So they kind of laugh at me on set.

'Cause when we're doing mocap

and when we're in the volume, I'm making the web sounds.

When I shoot, you know, [imitates web shooting],

I'm doing all that, I'm going full blown.

But when we're in the booth, we kind of have

to switch that up and just do the motion.

We kind of have to get the joints and how you are running.

You know, when you're talking and running,

you're in a whole different pace of tone

and your breath.

So we kind of try to focus on getting that element

of just the breathing, you know, in the booth.

[Miles shouting and electricity crackling]

[Miles grunting and punches thudding]

We have fun on set, man, they gave me a lot of leverage.

They let me know like,

hey, this is something that you can do,

this is something that you can't. Essentially, like I said,

we have a camera attached to our face.

So if that camera breaks,

whole scene is done, cinematic's over.

So our cinematic days, oh man, those are amazing,

'cause we have nothing but fun,

eight to five, in the volume, on set.

We have our crew, we have our cast.

We're all in our suits,

walking around looking like complete aliens.

We have our stunt team on there,

and they make us look amazing too.

[Miles grunting and punches thudding]

Any of the crying scenes, oh, oh man,

any of the emotional scenes get crazy.

[Rio Crying]

[Miles coughs]

Is everyone, okay?

We kind of go method, and we take our time.

People give us our space.

So if I see somebody needs to have that emotional impact,

I let them, you know, get there.

I'm typically in a trailer getting my head right,

going out and giving a hundred percent.

You could have died.

[dramatic music]

When I read that Miles was fighting Venom,

I was like, damn.

I know Venom's background,

and we kind of all have Venom in us,

and we all have that inner voice.

So fighting that inner voice

and fighting that being

was kind of like a fight with yourself.

Fighting Venom was crazy.

I think the day we met Tony Todd,

that day was like, surreal.

'Cause we were like, okay, this is actually happening.

He had on some Jordans,

and I was like, how does he have on Jordans

with a mocap suit?

Meeting the OG, meeting the guy

behind, you know, Venom, man,

people are gonna go crazy for this.

And so everyone always tends to ask, do the Miles voice.

Super stressed about my college essay.

Pete's busy doing other stuff.

Really the Miles voice is really just

couple of octaves higher,

and just as a kid, getting into his youthfulness

is the number one thing to do.

So yeah, I'm drinking some teas, man.

I'm drinking some energy juice.

I'm making sure I'm eating good in the morning.

I got a hearty breakfast,

kind of just thinking about my 16-year-old self,

and where I was at mentally with that,

and just going through the changes of my voice.

But the dope thing about Miles now is

he's coming into college.

So he's a college boy now,

and he's coming into his own as a young man.

So they're letting my natural voice come into play now.

Miles sits with his chest out all the time.

You know, Miles has a little, you know,

more stocky appearance.

It is definitely, definitely, definitely

a change in body movement.

You know, Miles has a youthful steeze about him

that he's growing up with.

And then being around Pete,

you have to know how to come into the reality

of just being a regular human being.

When it comes to Spider-Man, he's not a boy anymore.

He's running on walls, he's jumping off walls.

So he tends to move 10 times different when he gets

from reality into Spider-Man,

I wanna say the day I felt like Spider-Man

was the day we had to say I'm New York's only Spider-Man.

We had to build a set where, you know,

it was on the edge of a building.

So they typically, you know, built up a huge, you know,

rig of tables and poles and put 'em together,

and made it like a huge cliff.

I got up on stage, I'm high up, I'm maybe like 10 feet from,

you know, the floor.

And that's when we had to have that hero pose,

stick your chest out and have that idol pose,

and say, I'm New York's only Spider-Man.

[intense electronic music and singer vocalizing]

I'm New York's only Spider-Man.

And that was the day I was like, wow, yeah,

this is really happening.

Like, people are gonna hear my voice say this.

They're gonna see my face say this, my grandkids

and kids, they're gonna, you know,

know their granddad was Spider-Man.

Being a Spider-Man is kind of just overcoming your emotions,

your pain, and the struggles that that life brings you,

and becoming your own superhero,

because everyone goes through a typical struggle.

But once you've overcome that struggle

and that pain in life, you become a Spider-Man.

[dramatic music]

[static buzzing]

What is it like for me to wear the mask?

It's like a sense of bringing out that inner God in you.

Just being that loving person,

and being the do what's right type of guy.

We all have been through struggles and pains,

and we've all had losses, and just emotions

that we've had to deal with our whole life.

So when we overcome it, you know,

I think that's the slip on the masks.

I've gotten kids coming up to me crying

just in full happiness, tears of joy,

letting me know what they've been through with Miles,

'cause we were in the middle

of a crisis in the world while we were filming Miles,

and when Miles dropped.

So it brought a lot of people through a lot of things,

and I'm just grateful and forever thankful for that, man,

that I could be that person to do that for them.

Just having that connection with just being this superhero,

having that love for the community, you know,

kind of changes everything.

Number one thing is that anyone can wear the mask.

And I know that sounds like a cliche, but no,

it is great power and great responsibility

once you realize who you are,

and what you have to fight through,

and what the world brings.

So that's all what Spider-Man is,

is fighting through your pain, fighting through the emotion

and overcoming, and becoming that hero in your family,

you know, in your school, you know, in your surroundings.

Find that inner God in you.

[dramatic music]