[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The new film American Fiction plays with expectations around race, family, media, as well as what we want for ourselves despite what the world tells us our limitations. Thelonious Ellison, nicknamed Monk is an erudite crank. A talented misanthrope, a professor who doesn't publish a whole heck of a lot, and when he does, let's say, the books do not fly off the shelves. He is more than a little envious of his peers, especially writers who are having huge success with what Monk believes are junk food novels, ones that feed stereotypes.

Specifically, he is tweaked by a runaway bestseller titled We's Lives In Da Ghetto, written by a poised Oberlin graduate, played by Issa Rae. Here's a little bit of the trailer as Monk walks in on a book event with that author and ultimately decides if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Moderator: How did you come to write this book?

Sintara Golden: What really struck me was that too few books were about my people. Where are our stories? Where's our representation?

Moderator: Would you give us the pleasure of reading an excerpt?

Sintara Golden: Yo, Sharonda? Girl, you be pregnant again? If I is, Ray Ray's going to be a real father this time around. [applause] Thank you.

Arthur: Monk, your books are good, but they're not popular. Editors, they want a Black book.

Thelonious Ellison: They have a Black book. I'm Black, and it's my book.

Arthur: You know what I mean?

Thelonious Ellison: Look at what they publish. Look at what they expect us to write. I just want to rub their noses a bit.

[laughter]

Arthur: I'd be standing outside in the night.

Thelonious Ellison: Deadbeat dads, rappers, crack. You said you want to Blacks stuff. That's Black, right?

Arthur: I see what you're doing.

Alison Stewart: As a goof Monk writes a book called My Pafology, using a pen name Stagg R. Leigh and it becomes a hit much to his dismay. The publishing industry just laps it up. Meanwhile, his family is in crisis facing death, Alzheimer's, divorce, and long-buried secrets. American Fiction is a hit with a 92% positive critic rating and a 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Starring in the role of Monk is my guest Jeffrey Wright. As the New Republic review mentions, he offers up, "perhaps the most fully rounded performance of his storied career."

The Chicago Sun-Times said, "Wright is accorded the relatively rare opportunity to take the lead and he delivers a richly layered performance that reminds us he is one of the best actors of his generation, is a joy to watch." Jeffrey Wright is an Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor and he joins us now. Hi, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Wright: Hi, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: What does a film script need to have and need to be for you to be interested at this point?

Jeffrey Wright: Good words. Pretty simple. Good words, strung together well, around the interesting things. Cord Jefferson adapted this script from a novel by Percival Everett called Erasure. I hadn't read the novel prior to the script, but from the first scene that I read of Cord's script, the hook sank into my mouth. It's a conversation around race and language and history and context that he's having in a classroom. He's a professor, as well as a writer. It was a conversation that I had been having with friends of mine and inside my head, as we observed the discourse today.

It's a conversation that's happening around college campuses, but it's a conversation that we don't necessarily have well in our country. Identity and race and history of all of that is so much a part of all of us, but in some ways, we lack a fluency in trying to discuss it, and therefore we have unproductive conversations, or we just fight with one another. This was so well drawn. That's the type of stuff that I look for, is just smart writing around subjects that are interesting to me. In this case, handled with a good deal of humor as well.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you, it's very, very funny. It's got snort-out laughs in this movie. Why do you think humor is a good delivery system for discussing difficult topics like race, specifically race?

Jeffrey Wright: Spoonful of medicine. There's a lot of rather a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Sorry. Yes, there's a lot of good sugar in this and some good nutrients too. I view the comedy in this as tragedy in disguise. There's a good deal of emotion that runs through this and Monk is a guy who is confronting a fair amount of inner turmoil and frustration that relates to his family, to his father, he is, in some ways a bit shut off.

For me, there's a nice thread of emotional depth that I could play that was in juxtaposition to the absurdity and the humor that we find, as he's faced with playing this dual role and playing this caricature in public, this Stagg R. Leigh character that he has created, as the author of this book that he writes.

Alison Stewart: His name alone gives us a window into Thelonious Ellison, carries a lot of history, Thelonious Monk, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man. When we first meet Monk, because we do, Monk is different at the end, when we first meet him, what's important to him?

Jeffrey Wright: I think, to some degree, professional success is important to him. So glad you said, he's different at the end. That's really, for him what the film is about. He's frustrated at the top. Success is important to him. I think being intellectually and creatively free and his own man is important to him. He's not able to accomplish that. That's part of his frustrations. Again, he has other frustrations that are personal, but what's wonderful about our film and about Monk's journey is that he goes through a type of gentle or not so gentle at times transformation over the course of the film.

It's a process of forced self-reflection, and a type of reconciliation with some of that, the sources of that inner turmoil with family, but also with himself and with the world outside. I think he comes to realize that the world is as it is, and if you're going to survive and even thrive inside it, you should understand that and not try to make it something that it's not, but act accordingly, understanding its limitations. It was a great pathway for me to follow with this. [chuckles] It also I think, in some ways, was a good process for me personally.

This process of self-reflection, ideally leading towards some type of positive transformation. It was healthy. This was a healthy film for me, a healthy story for me to tell.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jeffrey Wright, the name of the film is American Fiction, it's in theaters. Now, Monk is just really super annoyed with how his crew is going. He's vexed. What is within his control that he's in this position? Then what's something outside of his control?

Jeffrey Wright: Outside his control is the perceptions of him, or the misperceptions of him. I think that's true with all of us. What's in his control is his work and the quality of his work? There's some wonderful moments in the book, where we see his inner life, there are moments in which he pauses, and this kind of meditative thought bubbles in which he drifts off into personal interests. He talks about fly fishing and the intricacies of outwitting a fish. He talks about his love of woodworking and the smells of cut wood and things like this, or he'll drift off into an idea about a novel.

We get a sense of his personality, and it might be one that is not expected from this author who was expected, as we mentioned in the film to write Black books, but that's who he is. What he's in control of, is how he expresses that. That's what we're all in control of, we artists, is how we express our creative life and our creative aspirations and the things that we're interested in. It's the most difficult thing, but it's the most necessary thing, and that is finding and centering on our authentic selves and our authentic voice.

He's in control of that, certainly. For me, that's the thing that has guided me through my work. I've always believed that if I was able to work in a way that was authentic to me and that was smart, that everything else would flow from that. I think Monk hasn't found that to be the case and so he's frustrated, but it served me very well.

Alison Stewart: I want to play a clip from early on the film when Monk goes into a bookstore to look for his book, which is called The Haas Conundrum. What is that book about? Just before we play this clip.

Jeffrey Wright: That book, I believe, was one that we made up, that Cord made up. That book can be about anything that you desire.

Alison Stewart: Monk is not happy with where it has been placed in the bookstore. Let's listen. This is from American Fiction.

Thelonious Ellison: Excuse me. Ned, do you have any books by the writer, Thelonious Ellison?

Ned: Yes. This way. Here you go.

Thelonious Ellison: Right. Yes. Wait a minute. Why are these books here?

Ned: I'm not sure. I would imagine that this author, Ellison, is Black.

Thelonious Ellison: That's me, Ellison. Yes. He is me, and he and I are Black.

Ned: Oh, bingo.

Thelonious Ellison: 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.

Ned: I don't decide what sections the books go in. No one here does. That's how chain stores work.

Thelonious Ellison: Right, Ned. You don't make the rules.

Ned: I'm just going to put them back after you leave.

Thelonious Ellison: Don't you dare, Ned. Do not you dare.

Alison Stewart: Monk's running with the books to put them over in another section. The line in there that really sticks out to me, aside from the way you say Ned, is, "That's the way change stores work." It's coming from the corporate level, right? "We just put everybody in one bucket. Everybody goes over to this side. That's where the Black people's books go." It was interesting. It made me think, and you don't have to answer, where you can just nod at me, is that something you've seen in your career as an actor as well?

Jeffrey Wright: I've managed to be pretty flexible in the way that I work and in the projects that I work on. I range across genres and films in terms of their scale. I go back to the theater. I keep myself pretty busy. I've always admired actors who were able to create character, like Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, guys like that were influences on me early on. I loved the way they were able to be one man in one film and another in the next film. That's allowed me to slot myself into a number of different types of narratives and projects.

I've tried to work my way around whatever limitations were expected, or presented, or placed upon me, potentially, and there were some. A good friend of mine used to say, "If you can't beat them, confuse them." I've used that as a bit of a mantra in the way that I work. There are people who've seen me in one film and didn't even realize that they were looking at the same guy in the next film that they were watching. I've been reasonably successful in this little field that I'm a part of. I can't complain.

Alison Stewart: It's a good workaround.

Jeffrey Wright: Yes.

Alison Stewart: My guest is--

Jeffrey Wright: I don't really like to complain too much. It doesn't really do me any good. My mother in this film is played by Leslie Uggams. Leslie Uggams, she's so beautiful. She's just so giving. She was so generous and so passionate about being a part of this. I'd been a fan of hers since her variety show in 1969 when I was a little tyke looking up and going, "Wow, who is that?" Leslie Uggams began her career at the Apollo Theater when she was eight years old, winning the talent show, she says. Her career has spanned that many decades.

She is of that generation of performers and artists who came before me, and Tracee Ellis Ross, and Sterling K. Brown, and Issa Rae, who made it all possible for us. Our freedom, our agency that we enjoy now was won by the generations that are represented by Leslie Uggams.

Alison Stewart: Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.

Jeffrey Wright: Yes. Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, of course, Gloria Foster. They did it with such grace and such supreme talent. I've got a lot of momentum behind me that I didn't have to earn myself, and despite the limitations. When I did Basquiat, for example, I couldn't get an agent after I won a Tony with Angels in America, but okay, whatever. What I can control, back to your question, is the quality of my work. Even though at many times the industry tried to place limitations on me or didn't necessarily see potential that they were willing to invest in, there were always artists that did.

There were always directors that did. Ang Lee, Sidney Lumet, of course, George C. Wolfe. I have worked with Mike Nichols. I've worked lately with Wes Anderson, and Lisa Joy, and Jonah Nolan at Westworld. I've worked with people who took an interest in me, and they took an interest in my work. Wes Anderson said, "I've seen every play that you did on Broadway and in New York." I had no idea. I said, "You never came backstage to say hello." [chuckles] Despite these misperceptions of me from the executive side, always on the creative side, there's been support.

Yes, I've for the most part had a pretty good run. I've enjoyed the stories that I've been able to tell, and more particularly, I've increasingly enjoyed the people that I've had the opportunity to work with.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jeffrey Wright. We're discussing a lot of things, including the film, American Fiction. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Jeffrey Wright. We're discussing his new film, American Fiction. In this film, Monk writes this book, using the pen name Stagg R. Leigh, which I think is a take on Stagg R. Leigh, the badass pimp in that song?

Jeffrey Wright: Yes, 19th-century pimp caricature.

Alison Stewart: In these first moments when Monk is writing this book, what is he getting out of this exercise of writing this book full of stereotypes?

Jeffrey Wright: He's getting what he thinks is a bit of vengeance. He's expressing his moral outrage through his pen or his laptop. [chuckles] I think there is something else that he's getting out as well. It's interesting. It's a send-up. It's a mockery. He's doing it, he hopes to shine a light on the hypocrisy of the publishing world. At the same time, something very forceful happens, too. He has this conflicted relationship with his father. What he writes is a conversation between a son and his father, a son who's disappointed, a son who feels abandoned.

At the same time that he's being dismissive, there could also be something a bit deeper, a bit more psychological and maybe Freudian that slips into it, perhaps without him even being conscious of it. When we shot that scene, Keith David and Oak-- I'm going to butcher his last name, the two actors who just performed so beautifully in that scene. When they did that scene on the day, it was so powerful and so intentional. Despite it being broad and caricature, but there was such a force behind what they did that immediately I said, "Wow, that's going to legitimize the entire film."

Because I think, yes, it's funny, but there's also layers of emotion there for them but mainly for Monk that lended a contradiction or self-contradiction. It runs in parallel to Issa Rae's character who has written this book, We’s Lives In Da Ghetto. Monk has a conversation with her at the end of the film that is in many ways a type of thesis argument for our movie, but the thesis exists somewhere on the table between the two of them. Neither one of them is really the most reliable narrator, I think.

Those two scenes together I think just lend a wonderful credibility to the film. It's owing to the writing but it's also owing to the performances of the actors.

Alison Stewart: Monk sort of learns a lesson about his own blind spots about Blackness later in the film. When you think about one of the important lessons he learned, without giving too much away, what does he learn? We talked about that earlier. He's different by the end of the film.

Jeffrey Wright: One of the things that Cord and I discussed is that we didn't want to make Monk's journey a celebration of the talented 10th. We didn't want to be classist in our lens on this story. We wanted to make sure that his flaws were evident and that the limitations of his perceptions of culture were evident. That scene with Sintara, with Issa Rae's character, is a point at which the hand comes to [laughs] Monk's face in a very direct way. He hears her. What he also does, I think, and what happens from the very first time they interact outside of her book, I think he sees more similarities in her with him than he had expected.

That I think in terms of his dismissiveness is a governor. From a professional level, from his misanthropes perch, he's put in check. Thankfully, he receives it. I think too, he receives being checked by Erika Alexander's character. He's made aware that he has an issue with being received, with being open. He is an issue receiving love and therefore he pushes it away. She too, another strong Black woman in his life, checks him. At the end, perhaps, and I don't want to give too much away, yes. In those two profound ways, he's a different man.

I think there's hope for him where there was less hope at the beginning.

Alison Stewart: The film, I'm not giving you anything away. There are a bunch of pump fakes at the end. [laughs] We're not giving away, but what did you think when you realized this film, the end is going to mean different things to individuals?

Jeffrey Wright: I think that's great. I think people have found their ways inside this film. People from across backgrounds. They found their ways inside it in myriad ways, whether it be through the professional frustration, the creative frustrations, not solely about being misperceived as a Black man, or whether they've just related to Monk as a caretaker, or related to the family dynamics. It's a family like any other. It puts the fun in dysfunction. It just happens to be populated by us.

They found themselves in myriad ways and found themselves inside of it in multiple ways, but they also, as you say, interpret our multiple paths at the end in different ways. I've been reading stuff online that audiences are having a great time experiencing this in packed theater. There's a curious dynamic where it's like, "What are you laughing at?" "I'm laughing at this. Do I have permission to laugh at this?" "Are you laughing at the right thing in the right way?" I think it's wonderful.

I think it's wonderful that it's open to interpretation and that it's making people comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. There's a little bit of, give the people what they want at the end there. Maybe some want that and some don't. I love that it's causing conversation. I love that people are asking questions. That's all we wanted. We didn't want to answer questions. We just wanted maybe to provoke some more interesting ones. It seems to be doing that and people are having a good time along with it.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is American Fiction. Jeffrey, thanks for the time.

Jeffrey Wright: Thank you, Alison.

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