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\u201cPeople don\u2019t very often go out looking for a \u2018Jeffrey Wright type,\u2019 you know?\u201d says Jeffrey Wright<\/strong> with a laugh. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of films that are written for a Jeffrey Wright type, so I have to sometimes do a little morphing.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s won a Tony and an Emmy, and has starred in everything from Angels in America<\/em> to Westworld,<\/em> but Wright had never encountered anything quite like American Fiction<\/em>\u2014a movie that really did call for a Jeffrey Wright type. The film, written and directed by Cord Jefferson<\/strong> and adapted from Percival Everett<\/strong>\u2019s novel Erasure,<\/em> centers on Monk, a down-on-his-luck Black novelist who stumbles into commercial success when he glibly writes a novel that trades in what he considers to be the basest of stereotypes about Black people.\u00a0\u201cWhen I was still reading Erasure,<\/em> I started reading Monk\u2019s lines in Jeffrey\u2019s voice,\u201d Jefferson told Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a> earlier this year. \u201cI started thinking of Jeffrey when I started imagining the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n On this week\u2019s Little Gold Men<\/em> (listen or read below),<\/em> Wright drops by to chat about starring in American Fiction<\/em> and tackling a role that\u2019s perhaps closer to him than any other part he\u2019s encountered in his 30-plus years as an actor. \u201cI think this film and this character is more personal for me than any other role that I\u2019ve done, maybe aside from Basquiat,\u201d he says. \u201cThis role is probably more similar to who I am than any other role that I have ever played. It didn\u2019t require a lot of alterations. It really just required more emerging and a kind of synthesis of the internal.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright was more concerned with the external when tackling the titan Adam Clayton Powell Jr. for Netflix\u2019s Rustin.<\/em> Directed by Wright\u2019s longtime collaborator George C. Wolfe,<\/strong> Rustin<\/em> stars Colman Domingo<\/strong> as Bayard Rustin, the queer civil rights activist and organizer of the March on Washington, and features Wright in a rather adversarial role as Powell, a pastor and the first African American to represent New York in Congress. Wright was meticulous about capturing Powell Jr., down to the accuracy of his birthmarks. \u201cPowell had these two moles on his cheek,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if you want to play Powell, let\u2019s play Powell. Come on.\u201d<\/p>\n On Little Gold Men,<\/em> Wright expounds on \u201cthe sandwich years,\u201d the lengths to which he\u2019s gone to avoid being pigeonholed in Hollywood, and the extremely personal process that was making American Fiction.<\/em><\/p>\n Vanity Fair:<\/strong><\/em> How did you get involved with the project? Were you familiar with the source material,<\/strong> Erasure<\/strong><\/em> by Percival Everett?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n Jeffrey Wright:<\/em> I hadn\u2019t read the book. I read the book late in the process. I was drawn to the words on the page\u2014that\u2019s usually what kind of catches me first. It was clear that Cord was a sharp thinker and a great writer. He hadn\u2019t directed before, but it was clear from the script that he knew his way around story. What drew me in more so than kind of this sharp satire and social commentary was the story of this man and his relationship to family and to love.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n