Oscar-Nominated Actor Jeffrey Wright on “American Fiction”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Jeffrey Wright, welcome to the program.

JEFFREY WRIGHT, ACTOR, “AMERICAN FICTION”: Thank you so much. I’m so pleased to be here.

AMANPOUR: We are very pleased to have you, because this is the breakout film of the moment, and I know you’re here promoting it for the U.K. release, which is this weekend. Did you enjoy playing this role, Thelonious Ellison, known as Monk?

WRIGHT: I had the best time working on this film, maybe the most enjoyable time that I’ve had working on a film, simply because we made this with such passion. We all felt very closely related to the issues of the story. And we also felt that this was a story that wanted to be told. That was a story for the times. And so, we dove into this. It was a small film. We shot in 26 days.

AMANPOUR: That I couldn’t believe when I read that.

WRIGHT: But we invested a lot of ourselves into it.

AMANPOUR: OK. So, given that you all loved it so much, and you’re talking about the issues and the story for our time. Just in your words, describe it. Give a synopsis. We’ve been saying satirical, you know, this amazing sort of satire on the stereotypes of race.

WRIGHT: It is that. It’s satirical. It’s social commentary. Lot of laughs, but there’s a through line of emotion, I think, that’s surprising for audiences. It’s a film about a man who’s a writer, also a professor of English. But he tends to write from a perspective that’s not necessarily marketable, at least in his case. He writes books that are a bit esoteric, you know, reworkings of Greek mythology and things like this. And the publishing world says to him, that’s not quite black enough. Why are you writing about this? It has nothing to do with black experience. So, out of frustration, he writes a novel that he thinks will meet their satisfaction.

AMANPOUR: OK. So, I want to just take this moment to express your frustration as the character when you go to a bookstore —

WRIGHT: Sure.

AMANPOUR: — and you see where your book has been stacked in the bookstore.

WRIGHT: Sure. Sure.

AMANPOUR: Here we go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WRIGHT: Wait a minute. Why are these books here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m not sure. I would imagine that this author, Ellison, is black.

WRIGHT: That’s me. Ellison.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WRIGHT: He is me, and he and I are black.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, bingo.

WRIGHT: No, bingo, Ned. These books have nothing to do with African- American studies. They’re just literature. The blackest thing about this one is the ink.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don’t decide what sections the books go in and no one here does. That’s how chain stores work.

WRIGHT: Right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, it’s constantly this, right? It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. But there you are — and this is the first stereotype you’re confronting in this film.

WRIGHT: Yes. Yes. And out of frustration, he decides to write a book that he thinks will appeal to the publisher’s tastes. A book for the masses. He writes it under it an assumed name Stagg R. Leigh. This character caricature that he creates in his head. And he’s forced now to lead a dual life because that book becomes the bestselling of his career.

AMANPOUR: So, let’s go back to the beginning because your frustration starts — Monk’s frustration starts with an incident in the English literature class. I think it’s an English class.

WRIGHT: Yes.

AMANPOUR: You’re teaching.

WRIGHT: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And a white student gets all bent out of shape.

WRIGHT: Yes. Yes, A Southern literature class. And there’s a word on the blackboard behind him that this young woman finds to be offensive. She’s a bit overly sensitive. And so —

AMANPOUR: I can remember the word. Can we say it? Oh, it’s the N word.

WRIGHT: It’s the N word.

AMANPOUR: Oh, yes.

WRIGHT: It’s from an a book called The Artificial (INAUDIBLE),” by Flannery. O’Connor.

AMANPOUR: OK. We’re going to have to bleep you. You know that.

WRIGHT: Of course. But that’s the name of the book. It’s — it — you know, American Southern Gothic. It’s — so within the context of that history, he’s teaching this book and the words on the board behind him. That was the first scene, obviously, that I read. It’s the first scene in the script, and I was hooked immediately. Because it was such a fluent conversation that the film is having about a difficult conversation around race, context, language, and history. A conversation that’s happening in classrooms across America, across the country, it’s really at the center of the national discourse in many ways, the political discourse. But it’s not a conversation that we have very well.

AMANPOUR: No. In fact, we have just had this conversation, which goes to the heart of the actual issue, because I can’t use the word that you just used. So, I have also got to bleep it out to avoid, you know, sensitivities by audiences and people around. Even though it is the name of that actual book that was written all those many years ago.

WRIGHT: Well, there was a line in the — that we considered in the movie that — a little secret we forgot to put in, well, don’t take it up with me. Take it up with Flannery O’Connor. I’ll get you a Ouija board. That was — yes. I mean, this is the history. And these are the things that we fear talking about now. There’s a segment of our society that doesn’t want to — that wants to pretend that certain part of our history that never existed. There’s another part of our society that’s traumatized by these conversations. And so, how do we come together with all of these strange dynamics happening to have productive discourse and problem solve around race and representation and identity if we are afraid of these things. And so, our film is not afraid we dive into it. And we do it with a good sense of humor about ourselves as well. And so, it provides, you know, maybe a little relief, maybe a better space, a more productive space to consider these things.