Jeffrey Wright Says a Replacement Actor Once Dubbed His Lines When He Refused to Censor the N-Word

“I said, ‘No, no, that’s not happening,’ and I walked out the door of my car,” the ‘Ride with the Devil’ actor recalled.

Jeffrey Wright recalls the time he refused to censor the explicit word in the line for Ride with the devil.

In the 1999 western drama, Wright, 58, played Daniel Holt, a freed black man who fights in an informal Confederate militia during the Civil War, alongside a cast that included Tobey Maguire, Jewel and Skeet Ulrich.

While promoting his new film American fictionshared Wright during an appearance on Entertainment Weekly‘with Around the table series starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown and Erika Alexander that he was asked to censor the N-word in a key scene while reshooting the dialogue for the airplane version of the film.

“In this scene where he experiences a sort of peak of his awakening, his need to emancipate himself, he says ‘being that man’s friend is nothing more than being his dog—– and I’ll never be anybody’s dick—– —-,” Wright recalled. “It’s such an empowering, empowering statement and understanding of the word.”

When Wright said he had finished the “airplane version of the dialogue,” he was asked to replace the N-word in that scene and instead walked out of the dialogue entirely.” There were a few swear words, and they [said] the [N-word] here, we’d like to change it to Negro or whatever the choice was,” he recalled. “And I said, ‘No, no, that’s not happening,’ and I walked out the door to my car.”

The actor then added: “They found someone else [actor] to go in and say that one word, apparently, to make the people of the plane comfortable even in the darkness of their own ignorance of the language of the race.”

Jeffrey Wright plays an author who unwittingly wrote a hit American fiction Trailer

Jeffrey Wright in ‘Ride with the Devil’.

Everett

Both Ross, 51, and Brown, 47, seemed visibly surprised by Wright’s story. Ross put her hand on Wright’s shoulder and said, “No, they’re not!” Meanwhile, Brown could be heard reacting with “Wow” and “Are you serious?”

Ride with the devil, which came about a decade after Wright first broke into Hollywood, failed to make a significant impression on audiences. It has only ever grossed $635,096 in limited theatrical release, according to Box Office Mojo.

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Wright told the story as he and his colleagues discussed the themes of America and race relations at play in the American fiction. He said the anecdote is about “understanding the meaning or significance of the N-word,” as used in the new film.

American fiction: The biggest changes between books Deletion and New movie starring Jeffrey Wright

Jeffrey Wright November 27, 2023

Bryan Bedder/Variety via Getty

IN American fictionWright stars as author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, described in the official synopsis as “a frustrated novelist fed up with the establishment profiting off ‘black’ entertainment that relies on tired and offensive forms.”

“To prove his point, Monk uses a pseudonym to write his extraordinary ‘Black’ book, a book that thrusts him into the heart of the hypocrisy and madness he claims to despise,” the synopsis adds, noting that the film “confronts the obsession with our culture by reducing people to outrageous stereotypes.”

American fiction it’s in theaters now.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education