DO THE WRITE THING

AMERICAN FICTION Stereotypes sell in Cord Jefferson’s scathing media industry satire…

Jeffrey Wright (pictured with Erika Alexander) stars as the disillusioned novelist who suddenly has a hit on his hands

Before making American Fiction, his adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, about a writer who finds unwanted success with a grossly clichéd book about Black inner-city violence, Cord Jefferson knew from experience what the establishment wants from Black storytellers. ‘Within the past few years I’ve gotten notes from executives to make a character Blacker,’ Jefferson bluntly tells Teasers. ‘And then when I ask them, “What does it mean to make a character Blacker?” nobody is willing to have that conversation.’

Despite adapting a 22-year-old novel, American Fiction feels blisteringly contemporary. Jeffrey Wright stars as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an argumentative intellectual and commercially unsuccessful writer.

Frustrated at the success of fellow novelist Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), who seems to share little in common with the deprived Black communities she writes about, Monk pens a grotesquely exaggerated novel as a joke on publishers. But, to his horror, the book becomes a runaway hit.

While Monk has strong, regularly vocalised opinions about what makes good and bad Black art, Jefferson’s target isn’t storytellers like Sintara so much as a system ‘obsessed with trying to replicate what it’s done before’, like slavery dramas, civil-rights biopics and drug-dealing stories. ‘I never wanted the movie to feel like it was finger-wagging or policing Blackness or policing art,’ Jefferson says. ‘To me, the more valuable question is, “Why are the people at the top of this system only opening their purse strings for this kind of work?”’

As well as a cutting, caustically funny satire, American Fiction is equal part family drama, as Monk reconnects with his distant siblings (Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross) following their mother’s dementia diagnosis, while striking up a meaningful new relationship with neighbour Coraline (Erika Alexander). Claiming the book ‘resonated with me more deeply than any piece of art I’d ever come across’, Jefferson similarly has two siblings who cared for their mother after a terminal diagnosis in 2016. ‘There were all these overlaps with my life to the point that it started to feel almost serendipitous, like I’m coming across this work at the perfect moment.’

‘I never wanted the movie to feel like it was fingerwagging…’

CORD JEFFERSON

Deciding within 50 pages that the film would be his directorial debut, Jefferson started picturing Wright as Monk while still reading the novel. For Wright, Monk is an exceedingly rare leading role in a career full of high-profile supporting performances – a fact that echoes the film’s message. ‘Jeffrey is the perfect example of Black actors being undervalued and underutilised in the industry,’ Jefferson says. ‘They’re like, “He can forward the plot for the lead white character,” but he never really gets the depth of character that other actors do. To me, it was shocking because he’s one of the greatest living actors, and everyone agrees on that.