Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II knew he had to be “honest” and true to himself as he stepped away from George Miller‘s Mad Max followup Furiosa.

In a recent interview with Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused, the Wonder Man star noted how his years-long busy shooting schedule led him to prioritize rest over the action-thriller project.

Abdul-Mateen II noted he graduated from Yale School of Drama in 2015 and was already making frequent trips from New Haven, Conn. to New York City to film his breakout role in 2016’s The Get Down. After that, he went into filming early projects First Match and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall.

“And then from there, I go do Baywatch, and then from Baywatch, I’m doing Greatest Showman,” he recounted, “and then I’m in Australia, and then from Australia I go to Canada to go do Handmaid’s Tale, and then from there I go to Atlanta to go and do Watchmen. Then I go to L.A. for a bit, and then I go to Chicago. Then I look up and I’m in New York for a spell doing Trial of the Chicago 7, and then boom pandemic, and then I’m off to San Francisco and then Berlin [for Matrix]. From Berlin, I come back, I touch down a little bit and I forget what I do after that, but then I’m back in London doing Aquaman 2, and it’s 2021 by now, and I’m tired.”

Abdul-Mateen II added that he left out his filming stint in Brazil for Black Mirror.

“I won’t call them champagne problems, but these are gifts, these are blessings the entire way, but it did come with something else which was me just being very, very tired,” the Us actor said, “and the world was changing, the world was responding to me differently, just as — all of a sudden — I’m some type of commodity, and people were looking at me differently. I’m just adjusting to this new reality at the same time as the world is changing, and then whatever else it was I had going on in my own personal life, and still having to persevere and perform.”

So when director George Miller, whom he described as “on top of it,” set up dedicated phone calls and Zooms a year out from production, despite the actor’s appreciation of his creative vision, he felt he wouldn’t be able to make space to deliver.

“It wasn’t overwhelming. It was so cool; it was actually so cool because he loved it. And it was like the only thing that he cared about and he made the time in his life to do that, and he had his actors involved in the process a year ahead, just having creative and imaginative conversations, and I knew deep down inside that it was too much and that I needed to rest,” Abdul-Mateen II concluded. “I’m so glad that I handled that honestly, that I was honest about the way that I handled that because then I could separate myself from that with integrity and let another actor step in to do a fantastic job and bring everything that they had. And also, it allowed me to rest and rejuvenate and recalibrate and then wait, keep continuing to say no until the right thing showed up.”

Eventually, Tom Burke replaced the Candyman star in the prequel also starring Anya Taylor-Joy. At the time, Deadline reported the exit was due to a scheduling conflict, with sources saying it was related to a secret passion project Abdul-Mateen II had been developing for some time.

Outside of Wonder Man Season 2, Abdul-Mateen has a spate of upcoming projects, including Liminal, House of Games, The Adventures of Cliff Booth and By Any Means. He was also recently seen in Netflix’s newly released thriller series Man on Fire.

Watch the clip from the interview below:

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes a few details about the Season 2 finale of CBS’ Watson.

Watson and Sherlock’s fates intertwined one last time in the Season 2 finale of Watson, which serves as a series finale as the CBS medical drama has been canceled.

In the finale, as Watson (Morris Chestnut) traveled with Mary (Rochelle Aytes) to Baltimore to get surgery for the glioblastoma that had been causing his Sherlock Holmes visions all season, a disoriented Holmes — in the flesh — was admitted to the Holmes Clinic in Pittsburgh. When Watson got word, he abandoned his surgery plans and returned to treat his friend. He deducted the cause of Sherlock’s illness but the delay of his own life-saving surgery cost him, and Watson suffered a debilitating seizure.

He eventually woke up and professed his love to Mary who reciprocated. With his surgeon coming to Pittsburgh, the finale ended with Watson in the OR and a vision of him and Mary living at 221B Baker Street in London, the future he had laid out for them in their heart-to-heart hours earlier.

Speaking to Deadline, Watson creator/executive producer Craig Sweeny addressed how he approached the finale and its ending and provided one explanation for the Baker Street flashforward.

“The season finale was tricky to write in that, even while we were filming it, we didn’t know if the show was coming back or not,” he said.

CBS’ cancellation decision came after Watson had wrapped production on Season 2.

“We opted to treat it mostly as a season finale, with a coda appended that nods to a possible future for Watson and Mary,” Sweeny added. “The coda, set at Baker Street, has several possible interpretations — among other things, it could be a fantasia Watson is seeing as he’s on the operating table in what may be his dying moments. I have my own interpretation but prefer not to comment on it beyond what’s on the screen so audiences can make up their own minds.”

At the time of the Watson January 2025 series premiere, Sweeny told Deadline that he had built the show on the presumption that Sherlock is dead. “I don’t want to be held to that if there’s some great story that presents itself, but I don’t believe that we’re ever going to feature Sherlock as an ongoing character in the show Watson at this time,” Sweeny said back then.

Following the Season 2 finale, Sweeny explained to Deadline how the idea of bringing Sherlock onto the show started and evolved — the famous detective spent most of the season as what all assumed was a hallucination stemming from Watson’s brain tumor — and what the Season 3 plan for the Watson/Sherlock storyline was.

“In Season 3, Watson would also have been Sherlock’s doctor treating ongoing complications from the ailment that plagued Holmes at the end of Season 2,” Sweeny said. “We originally conceived the Watson/Holmes storyline to have Holmes exist only as a delusion in Watson’s head as a means for Watson to learn about his glioblastoma, but quickly revised those plans after we saw what Robert Carlyle brought to the role of Sherlock Holmes. Watson’s Holmes and Watson were fun to write and watch, and so we devised a way for Sherlock to be present in the real world.”

The Season 2 finale of Watson left storylines open-ended for the young doctors too, including the ongoing investigation into Beck’s death, the search for Sasha’s birth mother and Sasha (Inga Schlingmann) breaking up with Stephens (Peter Mark Kendall). Season 3 would’ve wrapped their fellowship arcs.

“The heart of Watson was the cases, so if we had come back we would have continued to hunt the strange and amazing scientific outliers that made up our strongest episodes,” Sweeny said. “Of course, medical fellowships last three years, so a major theme of season three would have been exploring what would have happened to Ingrid, Stephens, Adam, and Sasha at the end of their Fellowships and how many new doctors would be worked into the mix.”

Sweeny took the opportunity of the Watson finale to reflect on the series’ two-season run.

“We had a lot more to say with the show, so of course it’s sad we won’t be making any more,” he said. “But I’m grateful that we got to write and produce 33 episodes. I love to write procedurals with cases that are set at the edge of what humans know, and Watson gave me and our team the chance to do that every week.”

Sweeny previously spent five years on CBS’ Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson procedural Elementary, most of them as executive producer. He went on to acknowledge Watson executive producer Dr. Shäron Moalem, who “shared insights from decades working in genetics and was singularly important in crafting cases set on the vanguard of what’s possible.”

Sweeny also praised the work environment on Watson and its No.1 on the Call Sheet.

“Making Watson for two seasons was a rewarding experience for the producers, cast, and crew. We had tight-knit communities in Los Angeles and Vancouver,” he said of the series, which was written in Los Angeles and filmed in Vancouver. “I’ve been blessed to have career highlights and happy experiences on shows, but I’ve never known anything quite like the warm and collegial vibe that prevailed on Watson. I’m especially grateful to Morris Chestnut for his role in making that happen. When Morris was considering the role, we met for coffee and talked about the environment we both hoped to foster. His tireless leadership and example helped make the Watson set a happy experience for everyone who worked there.”

As he closes (prematurely) the chapter on Watson, Sweeny chooses to focus on the positive.

While thanking the “special group of people” who worked on the series, his producing partners, the cast, the writing staff, the casting and post departments, he said, “Naturally, all of us mourn the loss of the show and the community around it while also being grateful for the opportunity to make as much Watson as we did.”