Jeffrey Wright, shape-shifter supreme, sees some of himself in ‘American Fiction’
By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Wright has played Jean-Michel Basquiat, Martin Luther King Jr. and Muddy Waters. Across an expansive array of roles both small and large for more than two decades, Wright has been among the most malleable of actors, able to transform endlessly while still maintaining a singular screen presence. But it’s a character that Wright says most resembles himself that’s earning him some of the greatest acclaim of his career. In Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” Wright plays a sardonic author who sarcastically pens a novel that lampoons African American stereotypes yet becomes an unironic sensation.
