Jeffrey Wright Joins Boardwalk Empire

Published by Interrobang Staff at September 7, 2013

Jeffrey Wright is one of the great actors of his generation. From his brilliant portrayal of artist Jean-Michele Basquiat to his cold calculated performance in “Source Code”, and a long list of great roles in between, Jeffrey Wright has shown incredible range and talent. And now he’s bringing his talents to the small screen on HBO’s critically acclaimed series “Boardwalk Empire.” He stopped by the SiriusXM studios recently to talk with Ron Bennington about Season 4. Excerpts from the interview appear below, and you can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.

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Jeffrey Wright Talks About His Character , Valentin Narcisse

Ron Bennington: You’re on “Boardwalk Empire” this year. I’m still trying to figure out your character, I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but it’s one of the most complicated characters I’ve ever seen.

Jeffrey Wright: Yes, he is the alpha dog crime boss from Harlem 1924. He comes down to Atlantic City to sort out a bit of a mess, and only leaves a bigger mess. He’s described as “a doctor of divinity,” I call him a doctor of divinity and vice – a doctor of chaos. I don’t think that he’s a character, I hope, that we’ve seen a lot of before.

Ron Bennington: No, I certainly haven’t. I have never seen anybody walk the line like this. And the way he talks, because he’s originally from Trinidad?

Jeffrey Wright: Yes, Trinidad.

Ron Bennington: Now, would that give a whole different feel to his point of view and where he’s coming in, at that time?

Jeffrey Wright: Yeah, a lot of these guys… He’s based on a guy named Casper Holstein, very loosely based or a distorted version of Casper Holstein with a lot of the benevolence sucked out of him. Casper Holstein was the biggest numbers runner in Harlem in the early 20’s and was making millions of dollars a year – was a philanthropist on the level of the Carnegies and advocating on behalf of the rights for the Virgin Islands. He was a Garveyite, a supporter of Marcus Garvey, a really incredible figure. But the reason that these guys often, these kind of Caribbean immigrants had an advantage was because their educational system down there was very different. So he had a different relationship with language and they had a different relationship to their own sense of self. So, there is a tension, at times, and it still exists, between Caribbean-Africans and African-Americans. There is a little bit of a historical rivalry, if you will. And a lot of that has to do with this kind of British education system that folks grew up under. So he comes with a very self-assured confidence, and he’s also a character that uses language in a very specific way. He’s not someone who is rural. He’s not someone who is uneducated. He has expectations about his place in society, whether he’s in Harlem or he’s in Atlantic City or, frankly, whether he’s dealing with black folks or white folks. We get into that a little bit down the line.

Ron Bennington: And he’s kind of a separatist, right?

Jeffrey Wright: Absolutely. Yes, he’s absolute. He’s a racial separatist, kind of a black nationalist. But, he also is a bit of an elitist. So, there are certain black folks that he kind of has issue with and he has an issue with all white folks. (laughing) But, he’s somewhat contradicted, because clearly, I’m light skinned, so he’s light skinned, so he’s an amalgam of things, in and of himself. But, at the same time there is this self-loathing within him that doesn’t see that, doesn’t recognize that – that kind of dismisses that aspect of him. He only kind of clings to this ideal of blackness. He’s a very complicated guy, a very complicated guy. But he is only contradicted in his actions. He has one public face and a very different private face. But, within him, I don’t think there is any contradiction. He’s as clear as a bell because ultimately he’s driven by desire for power, money, and driven by his own self-interests. So, he’s completely uncontradicted. So, he’s a lot of fun to play.

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Jeffrey Wright Talks About Harlem In The 1920s

Ron Bennington: Harlem was such an interesting time back then, as well, because everything was exploding in terms of – it was really the first time black people found out, “hey we can dominate in entertainment business, sport…” and there was, I think, the first real feeling of, “we’re running our own stuff.”

Jeffrey Wright: Well, you had – it became this meeting ground, this Mecca once it was opened up. Because, it was in the early 20th century, there was this real estate guy who managed to get some deals to this Jewish landlord, but there was a black guy, I forget his name, who managed to come up there and cut some deals and provide some housing for some black families and that just opened it up. I think it was like 1900, and by the 1920’s, black folks were flooding to this area, not only from other parts of New York, but coming up from the south, coming from the Caribbean, and this was really a meeting ground for a new type of African-American energy. And as well, you have to realize this is only like 60 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, so there has been a lot of reconsidering of the place within society on behalf of African-Americans. So, there is a lot of energy and a lot of focus there and a lot of aspiration toward the future. In fact, at that time you had W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, all of these great thinkers who were trying, and the Harlem Renaissance as well is happening within that, so all of these great thinkers and great artists are considering what is the way forward now that we are free in America. Where do we go? What do we do with it? Should we be rural based? Should we be conservative, as Booker T. Washington said? Or should we go for, not only vocational education, but go for the highest levels of education as W.E.B. Du Bois would espouse? Then you had, Marcus Garvey and Du Bois who had this debate, as well, which was very personal at times, where Garvey considered Du Bois an elitist and half white. And Du Bois looked at Garvey and said, “you ugly black…” so there is all this vicious personal discussion and interaction that was going on and all of this incredible energy about this new freedom. And where we go with it, and how we build this new African-American society and so the show that we are doing, is happening in the midst of all this. These writers are tying into a lot of this stuff in a really, really inspired way, I think. So, I’m having a ball working on this stuff.

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Jeffrey Wright Talks About The Start Of The Jazz Age

Ron Bennington: And then at the same time, and you kind of pick up on this in the show, jazz is starting and I think it’s the first time that white people went, “we’re going uptown, we’re going to go see that show.”

Jeffrey Wright: Yeah, you had these, as we have, the Onyx Club, which is Chalky White’s new club. Chalky White, of course, played by the incredible Michael Kenneth Williams, he shares this club with Steve Buscemi’s “Nucky” Thompson and so, the Onyx Club is kind of a Cotton Club, but set in Atlantic City. Where you had black performers and white patrons, you had some black owners, but largely they would be partners with white owners and often had organized crime ties. But it was the first time, as you say, that white audiences had access, in the flesh, to modern African-American music and to jazz. So, the beginning of the jazz age, now the excitement and the interest is starting to accelerate because of these clubs and it’s a pretty thrilling set to work on. You’ve got all this great music and you have the Onyx girls, which is this whole team of Josephine Bakers that we have. It’s really cool stuff.

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Jeffrey Wright Talks About The Chances The Writers Take

Ron Bennington: You really have to be an active viewer to follow this show.

Jeffrey Wright: Yeah, and the writers and producers are not afraid to get into the nitty-gritty and get into the complexities and they are certainly doing that now. And that is what is really exciting about it. For the stuff that they have written for me, and it’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever worked on, this writing, and all of the dynamics behind it. If you want to see uplift and people singing “We Shall Overcome” and all of that stuff, you can go to a different place. If you want to see Oprah Winfrey crying for a baby and all that, go to see a different movie, this stuff is much more raw. (laughing) And much more complicated and dangerous. What I like about it, is that I think, I hope, that it’s really going to challenge people’s perceptions of expectations of what these stories should be about and really be fresh in that way, so that it’s more exciting. We’re seeing new things, we’re seeing things that are shocking, but things that are titillating. Things that are compelling. I hope that people really groove to it. I certainly am.

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Jeffrey Wright Talks About Who Valentin Narcisse Is Based On

Ron Bennington: Like you said, that is really our story as much as any of the great men stories that they taught us in school. These stories, particularly here in New York City, we have these stories of just folding over on each other, time and time again.

Jeffrey Wright: Yeah, of people trying to make the best of it. Particularly for a character like mine, as he’s based on this actual guy who was an incredible thinker apparently. I’ll tell this story: He worked as a courier as a kid and he was asked to deliver a package for this family, this Wall Street connected family. The woman put the wrong address on the package, but he delivered it anyway. She asked him how he did that, and he said, “Well, I went to every house on the block, until I delivered this package.” So she said, “You’re very resourceful, you should come work for us.” So, they gave him a job on Wall Street, like a menial job there. But apparently, he would find himself in the janitors closet by day, studying the day’s and year’s stock results. So he’s studying these stock embassies, and it was out of that that he had the idea, later, to tie a daily number to the day’s stock results. So there would be no ambiguity and now ‘fix’ could be set in. You’d only have to look at the newspaper and put a couple of numbers together to realize that was the number. Did you win or did you not? And so, his game attracted a lot of attention, he was making apparently like $12,000 a day at one point, making millions of dollars at this daily number’s game and he became so successful that after the Wall Street crash in the 30’s, the family that had set him up in the first place had been wiped out. He became their caretaker, he looked after them. This was how powerful this guy had become. As well, he was kidnapped and held for $50,000 ransom, apparently in the late 1920’s. He paid the ransom and when he did, the white mafiosos downtown started to cotton to the idea that this numbers game wasn’t just nickels and dimes, there was real money to be made. They were like, “who’s this black guy who’s paying $50,000 to free himself.” They all took greater interest and that’s when the Dutch Shultz’s and the white mafiosos moved into the numbers game up in Harlem. As well, prohibition was on it’s way, so the liquor game wasn’t as lucrative anymore. So, I just say all that to say, here’s a character who was incredible innovative. He was also, as I say, was one of he was also, as I say, one of the biggest philanthropist of the day, incredibly intelligent, incredibly innovative, incredibly resourceful, but he was using all of that in the best way that he knew how.

Ron Bennington: Right, he’s still street.

Jeffrey Wright: Right, he had to be. Can you imagine being a millionaire? You’re an African American millionaire in the 1920’s. The work that that takes and the focus that takes, and there weren’t a lot of opportunities. There was Madam CJ Walker, who was the first African-American woman millionaire. But she had a dream about straightening hair and she had all these hair products that she came up with and went through the roof. But, there were not a lot of legitimate options. So here’s a guy who’s got the capacity and using it to the best that he can. So, with my character, I think that’s probably because there aren’t a lot of available options for him, and he has expectations of who he thinks who should be. I think it probably drives his aggression and his sense of damage and the justification for his doing all the things that he does, because he feels that the’s entitled to it.

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Ron Bennington: So great to see you and it’s so cool to see you on the show. It’s amazing that all of this stuff happens on TV, now. It’s mind blowing. Jeffrey Wright, I’ll see you next time coming through, my friend.

Jeffrey Wright: Cool, thank you, man.