Wendell Pierce is Broadway’s First Black Willy Loman

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: And my next guest knows all too well the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Katrina. The actor, Wendell Pierce, lost his childhood home to that disaster back in 2005. He’s been a vocal advocate of rebuilding efforts ever since, especially for the mostly black neighborhoods that we’ve just been discussing in New Orleans. Now, in his professional role, the actor is taking on a timeless American classic. He’s starring as Willy Loman in a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s, “Death of a Salesman.” Head of the first ever black Loman family on stage. He spoke to our Walter Isaacson about the personal and political meaning of the play’s key them which is the American dream.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And Wendell Pierce, welcome back to the show.

WENDELL PIERCE, ACTOR, “DEATH OF THE SALESMAN”: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.

ISAACSON: And congratulations. I mean, but you, Sharon de Klerk playing Linda, you’re playing Willy Loman in “Death of the Salesman.” It’s gotten great previews. It is on Broadway. I’m sitting here within an easy walk at the WYS Studios to Ponchartrain Park, the historic neighborhood where you grew up. And I — it reminded me, the play is about that aspiration that came from places like Ponchartrain Park. Tell me about growing up there.

PIERCE: Ponchartrain Park is this great bucolic neighborhood that is really a part of everybody’s dream of what it would be like to be in a small town but actually in a city. And the result of the civil rights advocacy of A. P. Tureaud, the great civil rights leaders in New Orleans. And out of something ugly, we built something great. It came about access to green space movement during the segregated times in New Orleans. Black folks weren’t allowed to vote. And with this advocacy to have access to green space, the compromise was the ugly separate but equal, adjacent to a white neighborhood, we’ll set aside these 200 acres for this black community. And out of that ugly idea of separate body, where we’ve made it the incubator of black towns. Because there were lawyers, and doctors, and my parents are teachers, and maintenance men, and postal workers, and domestics, all coming together to show that they can share in this American dream of home ownership and building a life for their families. And that’s what Ponchartrain Park was changed.

ISAACSON: Well, you talk about it being part of the American dream and that’s what this play, “Death of a Salesman” is about. And when Arthur Miller wrote this, his father had been success but gone bankrupt in the Great Depression. Your dad came back from the war around the time this play debuted in 1949. And he had that struggle for the American dream as well. Tell me about your father. Do you see him in Willy Loman?

PIERCE: I think of my father constantly and incessantly when it comes to this play. Because apart of the American dream is the fight of the American nightmare, which is the paradox of what it really is. He loves this dream, it’s paradoxical and his behavior. He loves his family but does things to be self-destructive to himself and his family. And that’s what the American dream is about. We’re constantly fighting this paradox. The American paradox is what I consider it. We believe in equality and justice for all in than we do things that belie, that go against the whole ideology of that.

ISAACSON: When you talk about that, all of those things, the headwinds that come when you’re pursuing the American dream are amplified if you’re black. And this is the first time you got five black characters in this play.

PIERCE: Absolutely. This is — and so I think of my father and Pontchartrain Park how they didn’t have access to purchase a home in New Orleans. You could not even walk into the park if you were black expect for one day of the week, Wednesday, Negro Day. You could not even access a — the money that would be needed to get a loan, to get a home loan. You couldn’t even walk onto the French Quarter. (INAUDIBLE) French Quarter. When he came back from World War II, there was the double V campaign that all black folks understood in 1942. Victory brought against fascism and victory at home against fascism and segregation. And they won the battle abroad and came back home and still were decades away from winning any of the battles home in New Orleans. So, that connection of that disillusionment of what the American dream is and can be, that Willy Loman is on is the same disillusionment that my father had that actually he gave to us. You know, you can’t get lost in America is something my father would always say. And it was a literal thing because we would travel on some summer vacation but he would say it euphemistically too, that in America, you can find your way. But with that instilled us with the knowledge that there those who will not have our best interest at heart. They are racist, violent, segregationists, that you will have to battle and contend with to achieve this American dream. In the meantime, you will have to fight the American nightmare. The mistake that Willy makes — that Willy Loman makes that my father didn’t is understanding that simultaneously, embrace the wealth that you already have, the wealth of family and love. Today is all cut and dry. There’s no chance of bringing friendship to me. All personalities, you see what I mean. They don’t know me anymore.

BLAKE DELONG, ACTOR, “DEATH OF THE SALESMAN”: That’s just a thing though.

PIERCE: If I have $40, that’s all I need, Howard, $40.

DELONG: I can’t take blood from a stone.

PIERCE: Howard, in the year Al Smith (ph) was nominated, your father came – –

DELONG: I got to see some people.

PIERCE: I’m talking about your father. There were promises made across this desk, you mustn’t tell me you have people to see. I put 34 years into this firm, Howard. And now, I can’t pay my insurance. You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away. A man is not a piece of fruit. And that’s why this is a love play. In the hubris, that tragic flaw that Willy Loman has is while he had blinders on, searching for the material wealth, he lost sight of the wealth of love that he had around him and his family that would’ve helped him contend with all of the obstacles placed in front of him, especially were a black man in 1949 America.

ISAACSON: You talked about the obstacles placed in front of Willy Loman. If I walk out of this studio to Ponchartrain Park, I go through city park. And I remember the little signs when I was growing up, where water fountains would say, white only. There were different aggressions that the black would have to face. In this play, “Death of a Salesman”, there are lines like that that I think would have more resonance played by a black player like yourself. Lines where they say, oh, Mr. Loman, wouldn’t you feel more comfortable sitting in the back or something? How is it like in the play to have those lines?

PIERCE: It is — it just shows you that our interpretation, our depiction of a black Loman family just heightens all of those insults and aggressions. Like, as you said, when the boys go into the restaurant, they’re segregated, and put in the back. I actually have the infidelity with a white woman. And everyone always questions the line that I have. I say, go in the bathroom here. When there’s a knock on the door, there may be a law. I think there’s a law in Massachusetts about it. About us being together. And everyone assumes that we put that in. I said, no. That was the play — that was part of the play. It is heightened because you realized the miscegenation laws of interracial marriage and interracial coupling what it was like in 1949. So, those are heightened. And then the one that I always point out is, people always say, did you change anything? I said, if we changed anything, it was the reduction of one word. When Leejay Coach, played the role, someone insulted him by calling him a walrus. When Dustin Hoffman played the role, someone insulted him calling him a shrimp. When I play the role, someone insults me by calling me — and I don’t have to say it. The audience hears the racial — in the silence. And so, that just shows you the power of interpretation of having an African American family. And there’s — I expect pushback. There has been some. But Arthur Miller answered that himself. In 1972, when I asked him about the first time that there was a portrayal of a black Willy Loman, he says, especially with this play. It’s been so successful in cultures around the world and countries around the world, I totally expect a black guy to demonstrate his humanity and our shared humanity and his artistry in playing this role. So, for all of those who are accustomed to a certain way of interpretations being — of the play, I would say, why don’t we take the word of the author himself to embrace the interpretation that we’re putting on today.

ISAACSON: One of the things about Arthur Miller’s play that Willy Loman lacked that’s tragic is that he faces all of these headwinds not only does he not have the love that comes from thanking the family and all of that’s more important, but there’s actually no art, no culture to help sort of mitigate the wounds that he is feeling. You play in “Treme,” by far my favorite TV series ever, you played Antoine Batiste, and it’s the same sort of headwinds but it’s connected to culture and art. How do you compare those two roles you played?

PIERCE: You know, that’s a very good question, Walter. You being in New Orleans, you understand the role of culture in our lives in New Orleans especially, and that it’s emblematic of that role of culture in the world and in humanity. What thoughts (ph) selected the individual, when we reflect on who we are, we decide what our values are, our triumphs, our failures, when we reflect on ourselves, that is what the form of art does for us as a community, a place where we reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, where we hope to go. Decide what our values are, and then go out and act on them. That is a mantra of mine. Those who have read interviews and have seen me, I say that all of the time. And it’s very interesting that you said that Willy Loman doesn’t have a connection to that culture, to culture itself. Well, art may have been the place where he can — would have find some solace, find some understanding of the ineptitudes that he was going through and the obstacles that were placed in front of him, giving him some sort of steeled tools to work through or work around them.

ISAACSON: That’s a solace that this play offers us. That’s what Arthur Miller did.

PIERCE: Right, right. And actually, that’s the play as a piece of art offers then as a cautionary tale to those who view it, you know. And hopefully, offers Willy as everybody, the grace of God (INAUDIBLE) do not make this mistake. With Antoine Batiste, who had nothing, had lost everything in Katrina, who had lost his way, he’s not the most — he’s a ne’er-do-well, not the most focused and driven man, it was his art that sustained him. And it was something that we tried to do in “Treme” about New Orleans. It was the art that brought us back. First of all, reminded is us what our journey was about and why our sitting (ph) is so special. And I dare say that we came back and rebuilt our city with that reminder of that clarion call in our culture, that intersection of love and life itself and how we do it. That intersection was created in our cuisine, in our architecture, and especially our music.

ISAACSON: I got my favorite line from this play, and maybe you can say it and reflect on it. But it’s a part about, I’ve got to get some seeds. I’ve got to get some seeds right away.

PIERCE: Right.

ISAACSON: Nothing planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.

PIERCE: Right. That is it. I have to get some seeds. I have to get some seeds right away. Nothing planted, nothing in the ground. I have — I’m leaving nothing. I — seeds are hope. Seeds are visceral and real and life itself. And while I don’t have anything material, I haven’t left anything that visceral to my family and to my sons, specifically to Biff. And that line is so reflective of the hope that he has within the tragic interpretation of that, where he actually goes and he gets the seeds, and he is planting them and it is in that moment of giving hope to the future that he makes, I believe, his ultimate tragic mistake. We know the end of the play by the title, I guess. And it is iconic enough that I don’t think I’m ruining it for your listeners. But when he makes that choice to take his life, the hurt and pain and destructiveness that it causes cannot compare. They overwhelm his idea that that act is also a legacy that he is giving something to his son by having his life insurance policy that is not going to pay off. He — the disillusionment of that, if he had only known that the true seed that he could have left is what Biff asked him to do, ultimately, at the end of the play, just let me be me and I will find my way. You have given me enough. Let me be me. Let go of that phony dream. And that is the nexus of the pain and the catharsis that we all feel in the play. If he had only done this one thing, or if he had only not done this one thing, then it would’ve all worked out.

ISAACSON: Let me ask you one personal question, you’re about the most successful person I know who has come out of our neighborhood, you’ve done, I don’t know, 30 movies, 50 TV shows, but do you still sometimes feel that pain that Willy Loman felt?

PIERCE: Oh, yes. I — if I am to be honest, the successes of mine have been — I always see myself as a journeyman. And maybe I haven’t left a mark or left a legacy. That I have nothing planted. That I haven’t created enough from the body of work that deserve some significance. And a man can’t go out the way he came in. He’s got to add up to something. And I say —

ISAACSON: A great line in the play.

PIERCE: And that is something that I share with Willy. I think about this play has forced me to think of my own mortality. And the actor, Jennifer Lewis, says that I have 20 summers left. And I think about what I’ve done, what I hope to do, and this moment has given me an opportunity to mark my passing and we leave some legacy. A great piece of art and this great play, and the great role that I get to share with a small fraternity of men who have done it on Broadway, and more importantly, only night (ph), my father, 97 years old, will be sitting in the audience watching his legacy on stage, center stage on Broadway in this iconic American play. That is a divine gift. And for that, I am humbly grateful.

ISAACSON: Thank you, Wendell. Attention must be paid.

PIERCE: Attention must be paid. Attention must finally be paid.