Jeffrey Wright on Embracing His Inner Don Juan in A Free Man of Color

The fact that Jeffrey Wright looks entirely at home in a flowing powdered wig and eye-popping orange brocade waistcoat shouldn't really be a surprise. The title star of John Guare's A Free Man of Color has always been a chameleon, from his Tony- and Emmy-winning performances as the nurse Belize in Angels in America to a string of biographical movie roles, including artist Jean Michel Basquiat (Basquiat), Martin Luther King (Boycott), Colin Powell (W) and blues great Muddy Waters (Cadillac Records). It took a part written especially for him by Guare—the dandified Jacques Cornet, who lives a hedonistic life in New Orleans in 1801—to lure Wright back to the stage for the first time in five years. Guare’s comic epic mixes historical figures including Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte with the high-living mixed-race natives of New Orleans just before the Louisiana Purchase. Midway through previews at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, Wright talked about the appeal of mounting an epic play from scratch, his long history with director George C. Wolfe and the part that fit him best.

What a wild ride this play is! What do you love about it?
It’s rare to get the opportunity to play with grand ideas and historical forces and hyper-realistic theatrical gestures within what is specifically an American play. We do it in Shakespeare—we might transplant the story of Macbeth to the Civil War or some setting—but to have the opportunity to exercise classical acting muscles in a play that’s steeped in American culture is a real thrill for me, and I hope for an audience as well.

How cool is it that the play was commissioned and written especially for you?
It’s a great honor. It’s also slightly intimidating [laughs]. This is a play with epic proportions, and we’re bringing it to Broadway straight out of the incubator, so there’s a fair amount of nurturing during the preview process. But I’m enjoying the challenge.

A Free Man of Color is the third show on Broadway this fall [after Driving Miss Daisy and The Scottsboro Boys] about African-American characters written by Caucasian men. Do you think John Guare is the right person to tell this story?
Absolutely. This is not a play about white folks or black folks, it’s a play about America. John Guare is one of America’s great playwrights, and it sprang from his collaboration with [director] George [Wolfe], so I have absolute faith in John’s mastery of the subject matter. Part of what the play is celebrating the complexity of who we are—not a binary America, but a much more convoluted and interesting America with multiple European influences as well as African and Caribbean and indigenous influences. This is subject matter for a great playwright, not for a playwright of any particular race.

Your character, Jacques Cornet, is irresistible to women. Have you ever played such a babe magnet?
Only in life! [Laughs.] And in my youth.

Touche! In real life, you married a gorgeous co-star [actress Carmen Ejogo, who played Coretta to his Martin Luther King in the 2001 TV movie Boycott].
That’s right!

What’s the biggest challenge in combining two acting careers?
Oh goodness, the biggest challenge is coming up because she’s going to be doing a TV show [Chaos, created by Brett Ratner] that’s going to take her away from New York quite a bit. Thankfully we’ll have the show up and running by then, and I can take over for all the amazing, supportive work she’s put in at home while I’ve been trying to give birth to Jacques Cornet.

How old are your kids now?
They’re nine and five. My son saw a full run-through [of Free Man] in rehearsal, and he and my daughter sat through much of the second act during our dress rehearsal. My son has been back to see the first act, as well. His one complaint of the dress rehearsal was that it was too short. He loved it.

This is your fourth collaboration with director George C. Wolfe, right?
We did both parts of Angels in America, we did Topdog/Underdog and Bring In ’Da Noise, Bring In ’Da Funk, we did the movie Lackawanna Blues, and then we did that dreadful Neil LaBute play; the name of it escapes me now [This Is How It Goes, co-starring Ben Stiller and Amanda Peet].

I forgot that he was involved in that.
We’d all like to forget we were involved in that [laughs]. George is my director of choice. There’s no other director who gives as much to me as he does, who brings as much insight and value to the rehearsal space. And there’s no one who is more attuned to the subtleties and nuances associated with the ideas that this play touches on. He has an intellectual accessibility to this material that is rare, as well as a generosity of spirit.

When did you realize that stage acting was something you were good at?
I guess it was the first time I did a scene in class at college [at Amherst]. I think it was a scene from a short Chekhov play. For whatever reason, I felt that I found a place for myself. I look back now and think, “How could I have been so fooled?” [Laughs.] But at the time, it felt right.

Your performance in Angels in America was unforgettable. Are you interested in seeing the current off-Broadway revival?
I would love to see it. I’ve never seen the play from the outside! But the only theater I’ve seen the inside of for the past three or four months has been the Vivian Beaumont. Maybe I’ll be able to see it after opening.

Why were you the only Broadway cast member who appeared in Mike Nichols' HBO movie version of Angels?
I was the youngest. The movie was done almost 10 years after the play.

Did you and Daniel Craig ever talk about Angels on the set of the two James Bond movies you did [in which Wright played CIA agent Felix Leiter]?
Yeah! He reminded me one day on set that he had played Joe [Pitt] at the Donmar in London the same time we were doing the show on Broadway. There were a number of confluences for us prior to working together on the Bond movies.

Any news on the next Bond film, which is supposed to be directed by Sam Mendes? [The spy franchise has been held hostage to MGM’s financial woes.]
Things seem to be moving in the right direction, although sideways at times. It seems to be heading toward some resolution.

You’ve played lots of real people, including Dr. King and Colin Powell. Which character has been the most natural fit?
I would say [Jean Michel] Basquiat. It was the story of a young artist on the Lower East Side, navigating his way, and I knew that story pretty well. When I moved to New York in August 1988, the first place I lived was on 10th Street and Avenue D, on the fourth floor of an apartment building. Years later, my roommate at the time told me that Basquiat was on the first floor of that same building and died two weeks after we moved in. I felt I knew him very well from a creative perspective.

You won raves as singer Muddy Waters in Cadillac Records. Have you thought about doing a stage musical?
I don’t think an audience would think about it if I had to sing for my meal ticket! [Laughs.] I did Bring In ’Da Noise, Bring In ’Da Funk, which was pretty fantastic, although I didn’t have to sing. I probably won’t be going back to another one.

Here’s hoping it won’t take five years to get you back to the theater again.
For the past several years, I’ve been involved with some projects that have nothing to do with acting—one of them being my children. Another project [Taia and the Taia Peace Foundation] centers around some economic development ideas we’ve been developing in Sierra Leone. So my focus has not been so singularly on acting as it once was. I haven’t felt the type of passion for the work that I feel now, being back onstage in something that I think is meaningful and compelling.

See Jeffrey Wright in A Free Man of Color at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.