From Westworld to Wes’s World: Jeffrey Wright on The French Dispatch

If you were at the Telluride Film Festival, you might have spotted a man casually dressed in jeans and a peach T-shirt biking around town—but you might not have realized it was Emmy winner Jeffrey Wright, on hand for a surprise screening of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. “It’s my sometimes futile attempt lately to feel alive,” he joked about the bike riding, which has been one of his outdoor escapes during the pandemic.

The Searchlight film, which first debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in July and will hit theaters Oct. 22, is set in a fictional French city at a fictional literary magazine heavily inspired by The New Yorker. Comprised of several mini films based on the stories told by the journalists, the film finds Wright playing a food writer with the ability to recite all his pieces from memory. While being interviewed on a talk show, he retells a story about the time he thought he was going to write about a famed chef and instead was pulled into a wild kidnapping rescue mission.

Anderson wrote Wright’s role, inspired by James Baldwin and A.J. Liebling, with Wright in mind (so much so that the character, Roebuck Wright, even shares his last name). “I think there’s something about an exploration and a celebration of aloneness that I quite appreciated when we did this,” said Wright. “I appreciate that in some ways more now, coming out of the pandemic.”

Wright, who had been to Telluride many times before to ski and visit with friends who live in the area, sat down with Vanity Fair during the festival to discuss why he enjoyed working with Anderson (so much so that he was doing it again in a few days), what it was like to shoot The Batman during the pandemic, and why it’s tough to find a director who really knows how to work with actors.

Vanity Fair: Wes Anderson is known for working with the same actors over and over. But this is your first time working with him. How did you become involved?

Jeffrey Wright: I got the typical call from my agent who said that Wes had a script that he wanted to share with me and was I interested. It’s like, “Yeah, I think I’m interested in Wes’s script that he’d like to share with me!” He was in Paris at the time, and it turned out, I was going to be in Paris later, like a week after. So we ended up meeting at Cafe Select, which is a spot on Rive Gauche. It was a very fitting place to meet, while he described this role that he had written, as he says, with me in mind. It was an amalgam of Baldwin, a dash of Tennessee Williams, a dash of A.J. Liebling. And in fact, this cafe where we were meeting was one of Baldwin’s haunts. So it all made a certain sense. Anyway, he didn’t give me the piece then. He just described it to me, and I was intrigued. And then a couple of weeks later, he sent it to me. And then I read it, and I was in.

What was it that pulled you in?

It was among the most beautiful pieces of writing that I have been offered an opportunity to play. And it really was like a new melody that you hear on the radio that stays with you immediately—just every clause, phrase, word, punctuation mark just seared themselves into my head on practically the first reading. And I loved it particularly within the context of what was happening in country with this kind of debasement of journalism and the debasement of language and just the kind of celebration of grotesqueness and the way in which his piece was kind of a foil against that—and really at the end of the day, kind of a celebration of many types of beauty. And I was like, “this is a place I’d like to be right now in the midst of all this.”

Wes Anderson has such a singular vision for his sets and characters and style. What’s it like stepping into that world as an actor?

When I, as an actor, watch one of his films, I say to myself, “Hmm, that would be a nice frame to play within.” His movies are almost like a kind of proscenium cinema in a way, that he’s got these obviously very specific, very clear dioramas that he creates. And his signature elements are within those, of course here, the palette and the symmetry and the specificity of detail, all of that stuff. And so clearly, when you’re invited to be a part of that, you know what you’re playing within.

We bounced a lot of ideas back and forth before we got to Angoulême and then after. He’s curious about how I would like to slot myself into this vision or this character to that vision. So it’s really kind of deeply satisfying partnership to work with him.

That said, he is incredibly exacting and insistent, but in the best way. Like the best directors, he’s kind of tireless and relentless and just runs on infinite energy when he’s on set. Interestingly with him, I noticed that he’s a pretty reserved guy in person, almost hesitant. And very genteel and generous. When he’s on set he finds himself, he finds a kind of clarity of purpose that is really exciting to watch.

Both French Dispatch and the Bond film you’re in, No Time To Die, were delayed because of the pandemic. How do you feel about them coming out now?

Yeah, I’m certainly hoping that audiences go, make it to the theaters. But to be frank, I’m concerned. There’s a lot of uncertainty around how many will actually see, or will be able to see, this film and other films in cinemas. It’s an uncertain time. I think though, that there’s one thing that we have learned from this pandemic is that we are each in our own ways social creatures and gathering together around story and in public spaces is a big deal and something that we need and thirst for, now more than ever.

What’s been your experience filming during the pandemic?

I was on the set pretty much through the entirety of the core lockdown phase. I was on Batman from January 2020 until March 2020, then took a hiatus until September. And then I was on for September of 2020 until March 2021, for the break for Christmas. So yeah, we were shooting right in the teeth of all of it, with London, U.K. pretty much on lockdown. It was undesirable. I think we made a really interesting movie and the process was interesting. I think equally interesting to the movie was the way we made the movie in terms of the kind of cohesion that it required, us-against-the-pathogen type thing.

And you’re working with Wes Anderson again on his next project.

Yes, I’m flying out Tuesday. I’m going to take a bit of a break from Westworld…

To go to Wes’s world. So what brought you back to working with Wes again?

Well, he was like, “Jeffrey, here’s another thing I want you to do.” [Laughs.] I loved working with him. The thing for me, more so than anything now, is to kind of put myself in positions where I enjoy the collaboration and where I have the opportunity to work with directors, specifically directors, that I trust. It’s not always the way. It hasn’t been written that way throughout my career. I’ve worked with many directors that I have not had a fucking ounce of trust for, and I don’t want to do that anymore. And so, when you find those people and those collaborators, that’s half of everything we do. It’s rare.

So how do you know when you can trust a director?

It’s what they say and how they say it and what they know and how they describe it. It’s not just having this facility with composition and story and all of that. Directors are leaders, and they lead the entire crew through the process and toward the realization of the thing that exists in their heads. And with actors, there are really very few directors, even good directors, who know how to talk to actors.

Really? That’s such a big part of their job.

Everybody thinks they understand what acting is because we all see it. And it’s not like this overly precious thing, but it is a specific thing which can kind of present itself in a number of ways. There are useful ways to communicate to an actor and there are completely un-useful ways. And Wes knows how to do it, and he knows how to do it within the framework of this kind of aesthetic idea that he’s trying to create. And that just makes it more enjoyable, and it makes it feasible. Otherwise, you’re just kind of stumbling over yourself over each other and it’s just not fun.

What can you say about the character you’re playing in his next film?

He’s kind of a character within a character. It’s kind of a film within a film.

He works with so many actors time and again. I feel like once you master the melody of his words, you want to return.

I think he does have a certain music within his language. I love lyrical language and poetic language, and I love a really well-considered comma. I fucking adore a well-considered comma.

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