Jeffrey Wright Tells Onscreen Mom Leslie Uggams: ‘I’ve Had a Crush on You Since the First Day I Saw You’

Jeffrey Wright is in love with actress Leslie Uggams — while accepting an award from her.

The Emmy-winning actor accepted the Palm Spring International Film Festival’s Career Achievement Award from Uggams, the actress who plays his mother in the hit film American fictionon Thursday.

“I’ve been in love with you since the first day I saw you, mother,” Wright, 58, said on stage at the awards gala. “Who isn’t?”

The legendary Uggams, 80, started with various programs like The Lawrence Welk Show, name that song and The Ed Sullivan Show before dominating the stage and screen, winning a Tony Award in 1968 and a Daytime Emmy in 1983.

Wright was hired at Metro in December iu W Magazine interview published Wednesday that Uggams was one of his childhood crushes. “I told her about it on the last day of shooting [American Fiction]”, he told the latter publication.

On stage in Palm Springs, introducing Wright, Uggams acknowledged his reception to the crowd. “Maybe she’s still in love with me,” she joked to applause. “I may be old, but I’m not dead.”

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

(Left to right:) Tracee Ellis Ross and Leslie Uggams in “American Fiction.”

Claire Folger

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“I was asked to write some remarks tonight, but what I wasn’t told was that Leslie Uggams was going to present me with this award,” Wright began his acceptance speech.

“There was an actor named Bert Williams in 1916 who [did] the so-called film A born gambler,” the Western world the star continued. “He was a black guy who played in Blackface. You should not be afraid of that, it is history. It’s not black history, it’s American history.

“That’s where representation on film begins for someone like me and for many of us in this room. But now we have a new kind of freedom, agency and power from the time of Bert Williams – because of people like Leslie Uggams.”

Wright concluded his direct remarks: “Without Leslie Uggams, I’m not standing here. She won my freedom for me and I am grateful Leslie.”

American fiction PEOPLE review: Jeffrey Wright is brilliant in the popular comedy about a black writer

Jeffrey Wright.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

IN American fictiondirected and adapted by Cord Jefferson based on the 2001 novel by Percival Everett. Deletion, Wright stars as frustrated professor Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who writes a quirky novel full of black stereotypes under a pseudonym to defy the publishing industry – only to become a hit. Uggams plays his mother Agnes Ellison.

As for his career achievement award, Wright joked about winning the honor “at such a young age, just starting last Tuesday. But I am truly grateful to be included among the many distinguished artists who have received this before me, as well as among my colleagues tonight, who, as you have seen, are simply magnificent.”

Actors were among the award winners on Thursday Killers of the flower moon and its director Martin Scorsese, BarbieGreta Gerwig and the film’s soundtrack stars Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, plus Maestrois Carey Mulligan and The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

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Wright also gave a shout-out to the “tireless wonderful crew.” American fiction and “brilliant co-stars Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae, John Ortiz, Myra Lucretia Taylor and, of course, the one and only Leslie Uggams.”

Wright admitted to his screenwriter and director that the role of Monk was made for him. “Thank you, Cord, for taking on the madness of writing this script with me in mind. And I love you, bro, and I’ll pay you a session with a therapist for having my voice in your head.”

Jeffrey Wright in “American Fiction”.

Claire Folger

He added, “I appreciate not only that you gave me this role, but even more that you gave me the opportunity for some much-needed self-reflection.”

American fiction it’s in theaters now.

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Source: HIS Education