NEW YORK (AP) ā has played Jean-Michel Basquiat, Martin Luther King Jr. and Muddy Waters. Heās played Colin Powell, a Dominican drug kingpin, Batman's Commissioner Gordon and a longtime inmate nearing release. Heās played Bill Murray's neighbor, a Civil War-era former slave, James Bond's Felix Leiter, the nurse Belize in āAngels in America" and an android-human in āWestworld.ā
Across an expansive array of roles both small and large for more than two decades, Wright has been among the most malleable of actors, able to transform endlessly while still maintaining a singular, rigorously grounded screen presence. Is there anyone he can't play?
āDennis Hopper said in āEasy Rider,ā āIf you name it, Iāll throw rocks at it,āā Wright says.
Shape-shifting has been Wrightās aspiration as a performer since, as a young actor, he was naturally drawn to performers like Gary Oldman, Dustin Hoffman and Peter Sellers. He admired their dexterity going from character to character.
āI thought that was the way to go about it,ā says Wright. āIt seemed like it required some skill that was worth learning.ā
Even just in 2023, a spectrum of Wrightās range is on display. Heās the pastor, politician and Civil Rights activist Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in and the inspiring military general of
But itās in which Wright gives one of the best performances of his career. And ironically, itās the role that required less metamorphosis than any ever has for Wright.
āThereās a lot thatās pretty close to me in this film. Itās probably the performance that I could squeeze myself into with the least friction,ā Wright said in a recent interview. āMy daughter saw the film last night and she said, āThereās so much of your humor in this.āā
In āAmerican Fiction,ā Wright stars as Thelonious āMonkā Ellison, a frustrated and disillusioned author and college professor resentful of his his books being pigeonholed as African American fiction. In a drunken haze he sarcastically pens a book that plays up Black stereotypes (āMy Pafology,ā under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh), yet it becomes an unironic sensation with white publishing executives.
Itās a deft satire of race and identity, adapted from Percival Everettās 2001 novel āErasure,ā that Jefferson, in his directorial debut, surrounds with a rich, humanistic comedy of midlife crises and family dramas. Monkās mother (Leslie Uggams) is aging, his sister (Tracee Ellis Ross) dies unexpectedly and his brother (Sterling K. Brown) is coming out.
āI saw the film last week in Brooklyn with an audience for the first time. And I looked at the screen at one point at this family and the extended family around it, and I said, āWow, what beautiful people,āā Wright says. āTheyāre kind of extraordinary in their ordinariness. Itās a family like any other family, it just happens to be inhabited by Black folks.ā
Wright, a longtime Brooklynite, recently met a reporter at a midtown hotel a few hours after he was . A morning feast was laid out when a waiter entered with another plate. āMore bacon?ā said Wright, glancing at the thick-cut bacon already on the table. āOh, regular bacon. The healthy stuff.ā
Wright has won a Tony, an Emmy and a Globe (all for āAngels in Americaā), among many other accolades. But a best actor Academy Award nomination for āAmerican Fictionā ā which many are predicting ā would be his first Oscar nod.
āI donāt think itās totally healthy to think about these things too much but theyāre there, so one does. I guess if theyāre handing these things out, yeah, sure, weāll take them,ā Wright says. āAll in all, itās pretty cool, I reckon.ā
Jefferson, a veteran TV writer and former Gawker editor, wrote the screenplay to āAmerican Fictionā with Wright in his mind. When he later met the actor for lunch to discuss the project, Jefferson confessed there was āno plan B.ā
āIn thinking about him so early on the process, it's dangerous because there's a chance heās going to say no and then Iād be heartbroken,ā Jefferson says. āBut I just really wanted to take a big swing. I knew he would be excellent in the role. Iāve always thought that Jeffrey has the capacity to be very funny. Heās known as this excellent dramatic actor, but I also think heās a very funny guy.ā
Directors have occasionally written with Wright in mind; Anderson did for their first film together, āThe French Dispatch.ā But that's rare.
āSo Iāve got to make myself available in a lot of different spaces," Wright says. "Being flexible as an actor has served me well.ā
Yet there was something different about āAmerican Fiction.ā Wright is used to thinking that heās bound to be fired from every project. (āIt keeps the blood running,ā he says, grinning.) But āAmerican Fictionā felt uniquely comfortable.
āMy perspective doesnāt entirely align with Monkās, but certainly the frustrations that he encounters we share. What I was really drawn to more so than the social commentary elements were the family dynamics, particularly the relationship with the mother,ā says Wright, whose mother died the year before he read the script. āThere might be an impression of this film being comedic and satirical but thereās a deep vein of simple humanness inside of it that I appreciated.ā
Wright doesnāt quite ascribe to Monkās ideas of racial identity. He describes his own outlook falling somewhere in between Monkās and that of Sinatra Golden, a rival, level-headed author in the film played by Issa Rae.
āOne thing that Cord and I talked about was that Monk not be perceived as spouting the gospel, that he be flawed. We didnāt want to make this film a celebration of ,ā says Wright. āWe wanted to be very careful that we, perhaps not he, not be perceived as classist. Thereās some class arrogance within Monk that I try seriously to avoid.ā
Wright, 58, was raised by his mother and aunt in Washington D.C. (His father died when he was young.) They were, he says, the first college graduates in their family. Just as formative to Wright was his grandfather, a Virginia famer and waterman Wright describes as representing to him āwhat a man was to me in this world.ā
āIāve done very well but a generation back, itās a much humbler way of life,ā Wright says. āSo I wanted to make sure our overall story was evenhanded and that Monk might have been in need of some evolution in his perspective.ā
Wright attended private school, studied political science at Amherst College and briefly sought an MFA at New York University before leaving to pursue acting full time.
āI had the opportunity to walk through many types of rooms, in a variety of stations,ā Wright says. āAnd itās always been important for me to feel comfortable in any of those rooms but maintain the common touch.ā
Steady as Wrightās ubiquity has been in film and television, his path, like Monkās, has had its disappointments and sudden flushes of success. The births of his son (in 2001) and daughter (in 2005) diverted his focus. His role in Michael Mannās āAliā also led to a prolonged African excursion trying to
āI at one point became kind of disillusioned by this business that Iām in," Wright says. "There were some strange experiences that didnāt match what I envisioned for this work. And so I kind of drifted away.ā
Wright never stopped working, but he only meaningfully reconnected with acting after finding similarly minded collaborators. To him, working with filmmakers like Jefferson has made all the difference.
āItās nice work if you can get, but it can be a mess, too, if you get it,ā Wright says, laughing. āIt all comes down to who youāre working with.ā
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
