American Fiction, a film about the white obsession with Black pain

When Jeffrey Wright won a Tony Award in 1994 for Angels in America, the then-twentysomething actor delivered a rousing speech about holding onto his humanity. “To stretch creatively, and, at the same time, be intensely political,” he declared, “to fight the good fight, is all I ever really wanted to do as an actor.”

Three decades on, Wright’s promise springs to mind with his latest film, American Fiction, a savage satire about racism in the literary world. Written and directed by Cord Jefferson, American Fiction stars Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a novelist who’s frustrated that his books are sold in, for instance, a store’s “African-American Studies” section. Picking up The Persians, his reworking of an Aeschylus Greek tragedy, Monk complains, “The Blackest thing about this one is the ink.” When his agent demands a “Black book”, Monk responds, “They have one. I’m Black, and it’s my book.”

Jefferson, a writer on Succession, adapted American Fiction from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. As in the book, American Fiction documents white people fetishising Black pain; at a press screening, the audience’s laughter was one of relief and recognition that someone was criticising it out loud. “Fear plays a big part in our inability to have healthy conversations around race, identity and culture,” notes Wright. “In the United States, we’ve been informed by these things every day, but for some reason we lack a fluency in the language of race and identity. We don’t have meaningful conversations about it, and continue to make the same mistakes. So, yes, a 20-year-old book is still relevant now because we don’t progress in a meaningful way.”

Speaking in Ham Yard Hotel, in December 2023, Wright acknowledges to me that he remembers his Tony speech, and that he agrees that American Fiction honours his younger self’s statement. “The film is topical and meaningful,” says the 58-year-old American actor. “It’s also a story about family and love. In some ways, that family portrait is the most radical, subversive aspect of the film. It’s a response to the imposition of stereotypes and tired tropes that Monk is resisting.”

Monk, then, is a multi-layered, three-dimensional reminder that Wright is one of the most underrated, underused onscreen performers working today. Aside from American Fiction, Wright hasn’t had a major lead movie role since Basquiat in 1994. Instead, he’s regularly a scene-stealer for auteurs such as Wes Anderson (Asteroid City, The French Dispatch), Ang Lee (Ride with the Devil, Ali), and Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive, Broken Flowers); in blockbusters, he’s been tasked with elevating side characters who deliver exposition in The Batman, James Bond, and The Hunger Games.

In The French Dispatch, Anderson created the role of Roebuck Wright, an imprisoned food journalist, specifically for Wright, while Jefferson claims he read Erasure with Wright’s dulcet tones in his brain. Why do filmmakers keep asking Wright to play authors? And is it a subconscious choice, given how his surname sounds like “write”? “Maybe it’s something to do with that,” says Wright. “They’re also both characters trying to preserve their freedom. They’re living lives unexpected of them, that they desire, on their own terms. I love the way that Wes uses words. I appreciate characters for whom language is a weapon and a tool of survival.”

After all, in American Fiction’s opening scene, Monk is a lecturer at USC teaching literature of the American South. When a white student complains about a text’s use of the N-word, Monk furiously insists that if he can get over it, so can she; in a comic cut, the student runs out of the classroom in tears. The film thus introduces Monk not as an author, but primarily an arguer. “Yeah, he’s pugnacious right from the gun,” says Wright. “That first scene hooked me into the script. It’s a conversation friends of mine and I have been having for years, taking Monk’s perspective and arguing with the rest of the world, together.”

Monk’s rage intensifies upon learning that another Black author, Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), has written a bestseller titled We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. A few sample lines: “‘Yo, Sharonda, where you be goin’ in a hurry likes dat?’ D’onna ax me when she seed me comin’ out da house.” As a furious gag, Monk writes his own novel, My Pafology, under the pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh, deliberately filling the manuscript with crack dealers, rappers, and other Black stereotypes; its two protagonists are named Van Go Jenkins and Willy the Wonker. To Monk’s horror, though, white publishers go wild for My Pafology and spark a lucrative bidding war. A white publisher’s verdict: “As perfect a book as I’ve seen in a long, long while – just raw and real.”

In interviews, Jefferson has spoken of how, as a journalist, he despised being asked to write about Black suffering by editors. Moving into screenwriting, Jefferson found that movie producers would also task him with projects centred around Black pain. While American Fiction doesn’t name any specific titles that it’s satirising, Wright has avoided suspected targets in his filmography. “I’ve managed to weave my way through certain obstacles,” he says. “I break out of the limitations they might want to impose on me. For the most part, I’ve avoided it by stubbornness.”

Wright states that he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed, and nor does he want to pigeonhole himself. In terms of role models, he praises Dustin Hoffman and Peter Sellers for their natural ability to create new characters, the latter multiple times within Dr. Strangelove. “I’ve tried to stay flexible in that way, because that’s what the craft is about.” He also claims to have not auditioned in at least two decades. “If you’re a director who doesn’t know what I might be able to do, I don’t want to work for you. I’m not auditioning for anybody. I’m too old.”

Next up for Wright is The Batman Part II alongside Robert Pattinson, a film in which, as Commissioner Gordon, he certainly won’t receive the screen time afforded to Monk. (For what it’s worth, Wright expresses a lack of interest in reprising Felix in future James Bond movies.) While American Fiction doesn’t mean he’ll demand more leads, he’s open to more comedy in the future. I note that Monk reminded me of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. He grins. “Good! There’s overlap to the tone and observations; the isolated, peculiar, opinionated man, and the absurd situations that he finds himself in.”

At the start of our interview, Wright joked that he wasn’t sure he had 30 minutes’ worth of things to say. Half an hour later, it’s apparent I’m not going to get through all my questions. With time up, Wright ensures it’s on record that he doesn’t want to police Black art. “Our film is about a desire for creative freedom,” he says. “It’s not about restricting freedom. It’s suggesting there’s room for a breadth of storytelling. Cord and I talk a lot about this not being a celebration of elitist storytelling. The character is flawed, and may even be an unreliable narrator; his perspective is not the gospel. In the scene with Issa Rae, he’s challenged, and we’re uncertain as to where the best argument lies.

“We’re not suggesting these are the only stories that need to be told. We’re just saying that these stories need to be included as well. It’s simply saying that the Black community is not homogenous. The Black community is a complex thing. It’s as broad as any other community.”

American Fiction is out in UK cinemas on February 2