Jeffrey Wright Dishes on ‘The Batman,’ Wes Anderson, and Bond

Jeffrey Wright has been within the performing sport because the ’90s, however the 2010s are actually when Wright began to come back into the limelight. From showing in HBO dramas like Westworld and Boardwalk Empire to changing into a recurring Wes Anderson actor and starring in Spike Lee’s newest film Highest 2 Lowest, Wright has change into a very busy man, capable of easily transition between genres and mediums.

And in a brand new interview with Collider, Wright seemed again on his various profession, dishing on The Batman, working with Anderson, and the way an early James Bond basic helped encourage him as an actor.

Wright’s respect for Anderson comes by clearly. Talking about engaged on Anderson’s 2025 film The Phoenician Scheme, Wright mentioned he first fell in love with Anderson’s “lyrical, considerate” writing model once they first teamed up on The French Dispatch, including that he’ll just about settle for any half Anderson provides him—with out even studying the script. (He nonetheless does learn the scripts, although.) Wright mentioned he has an immense quantity of “respect and belief” for Anderson, and equally appreciates “the belief he has in me in serving to him to understand these varied visions that he conjures up in his movies.”

Wright’s franchise elements, in the meantime, have challenged him to work “in an genuine and natural approach inside these established aesthetics,” he advised Collider. For instance, when enjoying Felix in Daniel Craig’s James Bond films, Wright mentioned he hoped to reflect the performing model of Jack Lord—the primary actor to play the character in 1962’s Dr. No. However Wright additionally needed to place his personal distinct spin on Felix: “There’s sure tweaks I made to the language to sort of replicate ‘a brother from Langley,’” he defined, “and I dropped that in there for the duality it communicates.”

In 2006, Wright being forged as Felix wasn’t an enormous deal, however flash ahead to 2022, and that was very a lot not the case when he performed Commissioner Gordon for The Batman. Information of Wright’s casting induced a racist backlash that he first rebuffed again in 2022—however he stays (justifiably) irritated about it. The scenario was “fucking racist and silly. […] It’s absent all logic,” he advised Collider.

“It’s simply so blind in a approach that I discover revealing to not acknowledge that the evolution of those movies displays the evolution of society,” Wright mentioned, including “that by some means it’s defiling this franchise to not hold it grounded within the cultural actuality of 1939 when the comedian books have been first printed.” Even tales have to replicate the true range in at present’s world, he mentioned, though he added that when he will get concerned in tasks, he feels “that I personal these tales as a lot as anybody.”

You may learn the total interview here to get extra of Wright’s ideas on Westworld’s cultural endurance, how he received his begin in performing, and extra. And in case you can’t wait to see extra of Wright, he’s set to look in upcoming movie The Wizard of the Kremlin and can return in The Final of Us season three—and naturally, The Batman Half II.

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