Mahershala Ali’s Kimmel Dream Leads Back to His Brooklyn Years

Mahershala Ali once dreamed he was trying to reach Brooklyn when a construction worker opened a door and revealed Jimmy Kimmel. More than a year later, the actor told Kimmel the story during the host’s actual Brooklyn visit. The official interview above, from September 30, turns a strange dream into a conversation about Ali’s name, his family and the New York years before his movie fame.

A subway detour ends at a television show

In Ali’s dream, he was traveling from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Scaffolding blocked his route through the subway, and he ended up somewhere he was not supposed to be. A worker recognized him and called him over. Behind the door was Kimmel, with a cheering audience; Ali even found himself suddenly dressed for the occasion.

He told his friend Barmak about the dream shortly afterward. What puzzled him was the location: Kimmel normally tapes in Los Angeles. Sitting across from the host in Brooklyn gave that old memory a much more unusual ending than simply waking up and forgetting it.

The amusing part is the contrast between the route and the destination. Ali starts out trying to navigate an ordinary New York trip, with the familiar inconvenience of construction, then walks straight into a television appearance. He remembered that specific change even though he could not recall every detail of the dream. Having told a friend at the time meant the story was not just a recollection he first offered once he reached Kimmel’s stage.

His mother’s dream changed his name

Kimmel asked whether dreams meant something to him. Ali’s answer was direct:

“I definitely believe in dreams.”

— Mahershala Ali

Ali said his mother had been considering Christian Divine before he was born. A dream led her to choose Mahershalalhashbaz instead; he uses the shorter form Mahershala professionally. One dream was his own memory, while the other was a family story about a decision made before he could remember anything himself.

The name story gives his answer a reason beyond the coincidence with Kimmel. Dreams were already part of how his family explained his name, long before this imagined subway journey. He did not need to turn the interview into a theory about what every dream means. The two examples were personal: his mother choosing what to call him and his own unexpected visit from a familiar television face.

New York was part of his life before Hollywood

Brooklyn was not an unfamiliar place for Ali. He lived there while studying acting in New York, and he talked about the borough as somewhere he had actually needed to find a home—not just a setting that happened to appear in his sleep. In those early years, friends and his father’s New York connections helped him make a place for himself.

His professional training was at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. That puts the Brooklyn years before the two Oscar-winning performances most moviegoers now associate with him. The interview brings that earlier version of Ali into view: a student moving through the city, rather than an established actor arriving for a film campaign.

It is easy to recognize Ali from a few roles and miss the longer route behind them. The Academy awarded him Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight at the 2017 Oscars, then the same award for Green Book in 2019. Both films also won Best Picture at their respective ceremonies. Those are two separate wins, two years apart, not one award shared between the films.

The film that brought him to this interview

Ali appeared on the show while promoting Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, written and directed by Bassam Tariq. He plays Latif, a Houston hitman who is left caring for a newborn and two older children after his wife dies. His responsibilities at home do not wait for the dangers connected to his work to disappear.

The cast includes Adia as Fatiha, John Cho as Hwan Yoon and Giancarlo Esposito as Abdul Malik. Latif’s need to look after his children gives the action story a specific, everyday problem alongside the violence. Amazon MGM announced select theaters from September 25 and a wider October release; viewers should check their own theater listings.

The movie explains why Ali was on Kimmel’s guest list, but the dream explains the most unexpected part of their conversation. For a few minutes, the two-time Oscar winner was talking about scaffolding, a stranger who knew his name, and a door that opened onto a cheering crowd. His family’s naming story made it clear why that memory was one he wanted to keep.