‘American Fiction’s’ Scathing Satire Makes Jeffrey Wright’s Star Status a Fact

Apparently Jeffrey Wright has been hiding in plain sight for years! But the secret is out and his impressive shape shifting ability was on full display at the Arlington Theatre on Thursday night. 

While I was certainly aware of his stellar work in American Fiction last year (for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, as well as nominations for the Gotham Award, Spirit Award, Golden Globe Award, and the Critics Choice Awards) and was a big fan of his multi-character, multi-layered, multi-timelined work in Westworld, I had no idea that he had as done, as Santa Barbara International Film Festival Executive Director Roger Durling said in his Montecito Award introduction, “three Bonds, three Hunger Games and one Batman.” 

Wright is indeed the ultimate shape shifter, and as Durling said, “his performances are so full of details that he has been hiding in full view of us.”

The tribute took us on a nicely curated journey through some of those details, beginning with Wright’s extraordinary work portraying artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in Basquiat —a Julian Schnabel-directed biopic I adored in 1996 when it came out, but somehow didn’t recall that the actor who starred in it was the same man who also floored me in Angels in America in 2003. 

Basquiat was not only Wright’s first starring role, it was his first film, after working primarily in theater, including in the Broadway production of Angels in America, about which he said, “It spoiled me in some ways, because it was a perfect marriage of my interests. Storytelling and politics. And it was so beautiful, so lyrical. Just a masterful piece of writing. When I say it was a perfect experience, there were times that I was doing that play, I remember saying to myself ‘I am where I am to be right now.’”

Looking back on those days, Wright, who didn’t begin acting until his junior year at Amherst College, said that up to that point, “I spent more time in locker rooms than dressing rooms, so I was not the most evolved cookie in the jar.” 

Nevertheless, he won a Tony for the Angels role and that led directly to Basquiat, where he co-starred alongside big name actors such as Al Pacino, about whom he said, “I realized that he loves the process maybe more than he loves the final thing. For him, the process of working and mining through it, that was it.” He also worked on that show with Christopher Walken, who he greatly admires and observed, “He took Shakespeare, and it was as though he was recreating it out of his mouth with every breath. It was alive.”

In terms of Basquiat, he said, “I understood spaces that he inhabited. I understood what he was trying to do, in some ways…I also think I draw from similar creative sources or pools. His work speaks so deeply to me.” Wright also said “I think there’s a throughline from his [Basquiat’s] story to Monk’s story in American Fiction.”

Other films showcased at the tribute were Ride With the Devil, a 1999 western directed by Ang Lee; and Shaft, where Wright played a drug dealer from the Dominican Republic with a spot-on accent that Durling asked about. “I hung out in Washington Heights,” quipped Wright, referring to the lower Manhattan neighborhood with a significant Dominican population that Lin Manuel Miranda memorialized in In the Heights. Wright said he was also deeply influenced by the intensity of Gary Oldman’s work in the film about the Sex Pistols, Sid and Nancy — ”You can really go there,” he said.

“I was really just trying to do my version of the Jack Lord cool,” said Wright about his first Bond film, the 2006 Casino Royale, where he took on the role of CIA agent Felix Leiter, which Lord had played in earlier Bond film Dr. No and Wright later reprised in Quantum of Solace and No Time to Die.

Also getting the tribute spotlight was Cadillac Records, where Wright played Muddy Waters, a man who couldn’t read or write and “basically writes the music that was the beginning of rock ‘n roll,” he said. In terms of the difference between playing a real person and a fictional role, he said, “There’s an additional responsibility of going to recreate the story of someone’s life. I kind of tend to take that reasonably seriously. And try my best to at least find the essence of who they were. And research as much as possible about who they were.”

Other clips spotlighted were The Batman (“I’m looking forward to getting back into Gotham,” he said), and O.G., a prison film directed by Madeleine Sackler, and filmed entirely in Pendleton Correctional Facility using real prisoners and guards as cast members, about which Wright said, “We have the opportunity to try in doing this work to explore many different spaces. … There was a big conversation happening about prison reform and incarceration. I saw it as an opportunity to work, to challenge myself, and to educate myself.”

We also took a look at his most recent work in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and of course, American Fiction, which Wright described about “a family that puts the fun in dysfunction.” Adding, “It’s a family that’s recognizable, because it’s a family that’s as crazy as everyone’s family is.”

The other big theme — and the object of satire — in American Fiction is race, about which Wright said, “we’re not smart at talking about race, but we’re all thinking about it.”

His award for the evening was presented by his co-star in that film, John Ortiz, who spoke admiringly of working with Wright: “One of the many ways he inspired was by raising the bar by example. That’s what the great ones do.”

Speaking of his work’s connection to the audience, in accepting the Montecito Award, which is given to a person in the entertainment industry who has made a great contribution to film (past recipients include Angela Bassett, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, and Julianne Moore, among others), Wright concluded with, “We tell these stories, we make these movies so that people will see them. So that audiences will find them. Take them in and find something inside of them that moves them.”