Reflecting on The Wire and New Orleans

This is Fresh Air I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, actor Wendell Pearce , is taking on a part he's wanted to play for years, Shakespeare's Othello, one of the most demanding roles ever written for the stage . The classic is a story of a celebrated military leader who is slowly manipulated into doubting his own wife until jealousy and deception consume him. Pearce is known to many as Detective Morland on the Wire and Antoine Baptiste on HBO's Tremay on Broadway , he became the first black actor to play Willie Loweman in Death of a Salesman, earning a twenty twenty three Tony nomination for the role . His range these days runs just as wide, a police captain on CBS's Elsbeth, a CIA officer in Jack Ryan Ghost War, and a villain in Raising Canan onon Stars. He plays Othello at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, DC until june twenty eighth. Wendell Pierce, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me, Tonya. Okay, so we are talking just a few hours before you go on stage there in DC as Othello and what is your head like a few hours before you take on this role ? Oh , it's really rest and relaxation because I have a couple of hours that I have to prepare for. But I try to relax and warm up and mind, body and spirit prepare for the journey . You know, I always think of these roles, you know, these iconic roles and large roles like the beginning of a hike up Mount Everest , so I'm at base cabin at this time of the day. That's a good analogy or a metaphor, whatever you want to call it because I mean this role you said has challenged you like few ever have. What is it about Othello ? Well, first of all, just the playwright himself, Mr. William Shakespeare , is a great challenge. You know, I try to do the trifecta, as I call it, do television and film and theater every year. You know, the great trifecta and all of the different mediums . But I think I'm going to expand that to quartet because I would like to do a Shakespeare every year if I can, because first of all, the detective work, I call it mining the text for all of its understanding and everything that Shakespeare is telling you not only about the characters, but how to portray them and what's happening . And that's with in the verse in the Ayurambic pentameter, but it's also in the hon opia of the words sounding like what they are and the monosyllabic words , denoting a slower pace and the opposite being true, multi syllabic words, a faster pace . That's just the technical aspect of doing a classical text like that. And then you have the emotional work that you have to do within the connection with the other actors and characters and the love that I have for Des Demona. And actually the discovery in this role is the love that I have for I ago , which has been key for opening up Othello for me. Normally he is just seen as the villain and manipulated by Iago, but actually he is a part of the love story too. He is in my interpretation, he is person that I've known and loved and trusted all of my life because I'm orphaned . I am an outsider and I'm orphaned since a small child . And so you build that up. And then you have to have the physical and then the vocal strength for three hour production. So the challenge is physical, it's intellectual and it's emotional. You mentioned a little bit ago that you do a trifecta every year , but is that an intentional thing that you're making for yourself? This year, I'm going to make sure I'm doing one of these three things, now the fourth one, making sure that you do a Shakespeare play. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm in the third act of my career, I think, you know, and I'm challenging myself is not just to go from job to job, but be intentional about the jobs I take . And I try to plan out the year that way. I still have to hope that someone hires me to do it and I have to be good enough to get the auditions and get the offers and all. And then also just as an actor, you want to be as diverse as possible . And I want and that's been the reason I've been able to have a forty year career is working in New York and Los Angeles and doing television, doing film, doing theater . There's many different places , I've produced play in Uganda . I've in Kampala, Uganda at the National Theatre there. I try to make it as diverse as possible and it's a great challenge and that's what the journey is all about. I'm hearing the words you're saying, Wendell, but I saw all the things that you're doing right now and I thought, Whoa, I mean this is like these you're doing more in a year than many people do in five years . It seems like as you get older, you're almost riding yourself even harder. Well, you know, that ticking clock of mortality kind of helps . You want to build a body of work. You want to , you know, subconsciously, that probably is a part of it. But also , it's not all at the same time, you know, right now Jack Ryan Ghost War is out but that was last summer and spring when we shot that in Dubai in London. And then Elsbeth just ended the season. We do that during a course of a regular television season from September to March. And now while I'm doing that, I was planning out Othello for as soon as we got finished to come to Washington DC and do a fellow here . And then Raisin Canan, we had already shot that prior to last year. It's been in the can for like a year. So it's all fortunate that they're all coming out at the same time . So it seems like I'm doing them at the same time. But I break, but you know, all these jobs and actors' life is in , well, I've discovered they're kind of in quarters of the year, you know, first, second, third, fourth quarter. And that's how I think of my planning because we work in three month period s, you know, a play in three months , you know, a full season of television is maybe six months . And a film is three months. So you're constantly planning and it's constantly changing . But I'm a journeyman actor . And some people say I shouldn't say that, but I actually embrace that. That's something that is I wear with pride. I love to call myself a journey man. Is there a stigma to being a journeyman actor? Some people think so. They say, Oh, Wendell, you shouldn't say that man. You know, you've established yourself in the industry as someone significant , you know, I guess people are thinking of some star system or whatever . And I said, you know, there's the joke that we have as actors of the five stages of your career . There's who is Wendell Pierce ? Get me Wendell Pierce . Get me someone like Wendell Pierce . Get me a younger Wendell Pierce and then the last and final and fifth stage is who is Wendell Pierce ? So you're racing against not being who is winter to that stage, right? Yes , yes . Do you have a favorite scene from Othello? Oh no . I have favored oh it's too many. It's so rich . You know, what's interesting is does Demona and Othello don't have any love scenes ? They literally do not have any love scenes . And it's one of the things that I really love about our production that in the midst of scenes of strife , of conflict of war , we find the moments to show our love for each other . But you know, the first time is they're going to war and I have to say, this is why I married her. This is what the intention is. I talk about, I love her . And then I get to war. I say get to Cyprus and I realize that she's there. And I go, thank God, you know, I've made it through it . But what is normally a rousing speech of on the battlefront, I make it into a declaration of love to Desemona because she's there and present, and I don't care what others around me at this time and moment are saying and you know, I say if it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy . You know, I cannot speak enough of this content. It stops me here . It is too much of joy , and I'm only talking about her , right? And it's normally played as you know, I made it through the battle and I made it here. And all you guys are here and I happen to have my wife too, and it's a really wonderful thing. We've done it. The war is done, you know? And I'm like, no, it's a love scene. Wendell, I'm noticing a theme in your work . You're drawn to roles that take you somewhere dark and deep. And of course Othello does that . so And did Willie Loman , which you play back in twenty twenty two when you became the first black actor to play him in death of a salesman on Broadway . He is an aging traveling salesman chasing success. He really wants to be well liked . How did you find your way into Willie Loman ? The first man I thought of was my father . My father was had a great work ethic . He was a man, very simple laborer who had wanderlus, loved to travel . He kind of instilled that in us . He said you can be whatever you want to be . And he also warned us that there are going to be people who will do everything possible that you won't succeed . And so it was always there that I started to think of Willie Loman . And what is so tragic about Willie Lowman is for many For men like that , the American dream was still that was denied them at every step of the way . We achieved part of the American dream , but it was through an extreme difficulty . And that's what and that can break people . That can destroy people's psyche and destroy their heart , destroy their mental facility . And I think that's what happened with Willie Loman , right? Because he was a black man in America that loved the country , that loved the economic ethos and idea of the American dream . But then that dream was a nightmare for him. He was placed in his expectations far out lasted and grew far past what was available to him. And out of that desperation, he destroyed himself and he destroyed his family. You know, that's what's so powerful about you playing this character I think that the whole premise, the idea of death of a salesman, it is something that everyone can sort of connect to, especially as an American here. Absolutely . But there's another layer there when you add on you and your identity as a black man. The black man in America . I mean, because what happens is there are people that came to the play that thought we rewrote the play . They said, You can't change that. A producer actually came to me just with great concern , like, wait, you ch ange you can't you can't say there's the scene where Willie Loman is caught in an infidelity with a woman in a hotel by his son . It is the moment that broke all of their lives . And I tell her, listen, go into the bathroom , you know , and be quiet. There may be a law against this Right? And in our production, I'm having an affair with a white woman and it's nineteen thirty seven, I think it was . And we're in this hotel And she is , you know, scantily clothed and there's a knocking on the door and I'm thinking it's someone that can expose our infidel . And I say, you know, there may be a law against this. And I'm thinking of the laws that were of the time that if the literal law s of you could not marry and you could not be together in an interracial relationship. And then there was the time that so many black men were lynched because they were caught with a white woman. It's one of the most dangerous things that can ever happen . It was the time of the Scotsborough Boys. It was the time of , you know, of danger. And actually the producer thought we put it in there , right ? And I said, No , that's in the play . Because actually , the law at the time was no unmarried couple could be in a hotel together . And that's the law that they were thinking of that in Boston at this time, you know , you're not supposed to be in a hotel together unless you're married, you know, there may be a law against this, and as that simple line rang out like something you had had never heard before it felt different, right? Yep . The last time that I spoke with you, we were in the pandemic and you were spending a lot of time with your dad during that time. It was like twenty twenty one. And since then he has passed away and I just want to offer my condolences first off. No , thank you. Thank you. I have my dad for he was two months away from his ninety ninth birthday. I literally he passed in in my hands, you know, we were holding hands. I was there with him and so I I had my father for a long time and those last years I spent I got closer to my father in the last ten years of his life than I'd ever had before. My mother passed and one of her dying wishes was Wendell, take care of your father . Right. She knew and you know, while I was working in Budapest, if I got four days off I would go home to New Orleans , right ? And spend time with him. It was but it was a blessing. I was traveling the world and being an actor and at the same time my home base is New Orleans and here I would have my father with me for all those years. And he was he was fuel to my fire , you know, he was reminding me of that he taught me and as I as I attack these challenges of these great roles and the different roles that I play, you know, he is very much in my process. This is a man who fought in Saipan in World War two , you know , and came back and was not his voting rights weren't even protected and here he was risking his life in the WV campaign in the Black community, victory abroad and victory at home. So he very much believed in that. There's actually a moving speech that you gave the opening night of death of a salesman where you're paying tribute to your father and he was actually in the audience at the time and I want to play some of it. Let's listen to a little bit. When this play was written, a young man came from New Orleans to be a photographer . He decided to go home and raise his three boys in New Orleans , one of which is me . He fought for this country and loved it when it didn't love him back , but he gave me the most precious thing ever love and time. That was my guest, Wendell Pierce on opening night of Death of a Salesman. And at that moment when you say he gave me time, you hold up a time piece and you walk off the stage and you present it to your dad . And that was the time piece pocketwatch from the play that you see Willie Loman received from his brother . It is and I presented it to him . And I knew in that moment it was probably the last time he would ever see me on stage . And I just wanted to honor him . Our guest today is actor Wendell Pearce. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley, and this is Fresh Air . You know, I'm thinking about how you say that you got into the character, Willie Loman by really thinking about the journey of your father and that story you told in your speech just then for opening night that was a revelation to you that your father was a young photographer right around the time Death of a salesman was going out into the world because your dad for the longest time , you thought he didn't want this life of a creative for you. You thought he wanted you to be kind of traditional man, a lawyer or a doctor something safe . He was oh man, I went to a very good school, a very great college preparat ory school. Ben Franklin, it's the number one high school in Louisiana . And it's, you know , all these great national merit scholars and people with scholarships and going to the Ivy Leagues and great careers . And he just when I decided early on in the middle of that, I wanted to be an actor at fourteen going to this other great school, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. I had the best of both worlds . Oh, he was so adamantly against it. He was like, let your mama take you to all that stuff. I'm not I'm not going to do it, but he stuck to his guns . His principle was You do what you want to do but give a hundred percent . And so he was adamantly against it. And but then my brother made me remember that my father was a photographer . And he said, I want Daddy's pictures, you know? If anything ever happens I want Daddy's pictures. I say, What pictures? And he showed me these pictures from an art exhibit my father had done when he had studied as a photographer. And he went to New York. I knew he had gone to New York to study photography because that was a trade back in the day. We didn't have our phones and instrematic cameras. You went to a photography studio and got your pictures taken. So when the instrumatic camera came out, actually an entire industry went away because a photographer like you're a grocer or a dry cleaner, you know, the family got together, they went to the photography studio and they took pictures and that's what he was expecting to do . And that's what I thought he was training to do when I realized he had an artistic vocation of being a photographer like Roy Decarivor James Van DerZ and all of these wonderful photographers when I saw these from his exhibit. So it was a dream deferred for him . So a part of his pushback on my wanting to be an actor his desire as a father not to see his son go through the hurt and the disappointment that he had gone through . And so that's why he tried to steer me away from being an actor early on when I was in high school. You went on to study at Juliar, which you have said is kind of the most terrifying experience of your life . You made it through there, you could make it through anywhere, but you there's this other story you tell that you've told many times well, we got to hear it here. Your most memorable audition . You had just graduated from Juilliard . And you're in front of Bob Fossi. Oh, wow, yeah, that audition , I consider one of the highlights of my career and it was for the Big Deal on Broadway. And I went in and I had come up with they had already started. It was a play about a boxer who is being manipulated by the mo b and he's throwing fights and he takes his life back. He goes, listen, all right, this is it. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm taking my life back . And so he explodes in the middle of in this one scene . And so I was going into audition . They had already started rehearsal , and on the break I was going to go in and do my audition . So as the doors open and they're coming out for a break, I run into the room and I said, All right, listen up everybody . This is what's gonna happen. I'm taking my life back and I go into the scene . Right. Everybody stops like, who is this crazy guy? They say, Okay , okay , all right . Everybody go on break . Bob Farsey clears the room . He says, Okay , now do it. The stage manager is fumbling, trying to find the scene. I say, All right, everybody, this is it, I'm taking my life back He goes, stop, stop, stop. The stage manager was lost . He says, he turns to the pianist and he goes, give me an F vamp . Bump , pump , pump, pump , pump , pump. Then he says , give me the script . And he says, Okay, start. And I said, All right, everybody, this is how it's going to grow. I'm taking my life back. And he reads the scene with me. No, you aren't. You're still going to do what we say. I said, No, it's going to go this way. Bump, bump. And he circles me and we read the scene together and at the end he goes, Oh , you're good . But you're too young you're too young . Aw, man, but I want to work with you. He calls my agent. My agent calls me and says , What did you do today? Bob Fossy called and said, He's going to work with you this year. I said, Oh my God, that's great. But you're too young for this, but he's going to find something. He's going to work with you this year. Later that year , I'm in a hotel room and I see Bob Fossi's picture comes up and they say, Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Fossey died today . And I was like, Oh man, I was going to work with him. I was going to work with him. And then I had the epiphany . I did work with him . I did . We did a scene together , had the music behind it , we read it . It was great. We had an audience of one , but I did work with Bob Fossi . And that's when I realized an audition is an opportunity to share your work. You're not asking for a job. You're saying this is what I would do with this role. This is what this plays about , this is what this film is about . And just go and do the work . It's opening and closing night and that's it . And if something comes out of it, the job itself or whatever , then that you get to continue to do the work . But that's my Bob Fosse story. What a confident young man you were. I'm taking my life back. Yes . If you're just joining us , my guest is actor Wendell Pearce. He's starring as the title character in Shakespeare's Othello. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air . You know, Wendell so many of the men you play are holding on to dignity within systems who don't fully see them. It seems to be kind of like the through line that I see with so many of the characters you play . And I want to talk for just a moment about Buck Morland from The Wire . In a lot of ways anyone who's seen the show knows it, but I mean he was the conscience of the show. He took so much pride in his job , even inside of this department that made it kind of hard. And I want to play a scene that comes after a shootout . It's where one of the women in Omar's crew has been shot dead in the street and now Omar, who is played by the late Michael K. Williams, is this fierce kind of stick up man who robs high end drug dealers and Bunk is investigating that killing and he pulls Omar aside to this quiet deserted spot and they have this moment that we're about to play. Let's listen . I was a few years ahead of you at Edmondson, but I know you remember the neighborhood how it was. We had some bad boys for real . It wasn't about guns so much as knowing what to do with your hands , those boys could really rack them . My father had me on the straight . But like any young man, I want to be hard too . So I would turn up at all the house parties with the tough boys, huh? Yeah, they knew I wasn't one of them . The hard cases would come up to me and say, Go home, school boy. You don't belong here . I didn't realize at the time what they were doing for me . It was rough as that neighborhood could be . We had us a community. Nobody, no victim. We didn't matter . And now all we got is bodies and predatory mus ic like you. And out where that girl fell, I saw kids acting like Omar , calling you by name, glorifying your makes me sick how far we didn't fail . I just want to listen to the rest of the show right now. That was my guess Wendell Pears and the Wire . Wendell, is it true that there was actually a turning point during the height of the success of this show when you thought about leaving it . Yes , yes. There came a point someone during the course of the war people were, challen ge us all the time. You know, you are only demonstrating the thuggery and the crime and you're perpetuating this idea that the stereotype that black folks are crim inally inclined and violent and all . I remember a woman on the train challenging me, an African American woman who worked on Wall Street . And I said, I accept your criticism . We should never lose the ability to be offended. Never lose that ability . So I welcome the challenge and that's an end the criticism so I can make sure that we don't fall victim to that criticism . I said, But we have judges , the mayor , the president of the city council, the city council members , police officers , lawyers , doctors teachers who are all African American . But you're only seeing the criminals . Imagine how tough it is for a little kid in those neighborhoods. They don't see the lawyers or the doctors. And if you don't see 'em as an educated woman , a professional and you can only see the thuggery. Imagine how susceptible those young kids are to it. And that's what we're trying to tell and the story we're trying to tell. Now in the fourth season, I almost quit because at our rap part y, a young lady comes up to me. She says mister Pierce , I was on the show this year. I really wanted to work with you . We didn't have anything together. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your work and all . And you know, this is my only time being on the wire. And I'm going to Brown, I think she was going to on a full scholarship. And I said, Who did you play ? And she says, I look younger than I am . So I was one of the kids in the middle school . And I said, Oh , and then she described the character that she played was this out of control young woman who slashes another girl's face. Oh no. Over something trivial . And I said, Wait a minute, you play that ? And she said, Yes . And I said, And what do you do in life? Where are you going? She was like, I'm going to Brown University on full scholarship . And I thought to myself, why are we not telling your story . Why are we not telling your story ? And I thought about the criticism and I said, That woman was right . And I said, I should leave the show because we're perpetuating a stereotype. And then the episode came on for the fourth season and it was so impactful and we see exactly where we lose our kids and we see that inflection point where we can save them and put them on the right track and where we can make them the young woman who goes to Brown on a full scholarship and where we lose them and send them into that pipeline into the penal system . And then I said, Okay , it's not arbitrary . That's the role we're playing on the wire we are the cautionary tale We are, as Shakespeare said, holding a mirror up to nature and calling our dysfunction out in our society that creates the criminality, that doesn't celebrate the education of this young woman going to school and all. So it wasn't arbitrary , and then that's the only thing that made me come back. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is actor Wendell Pearce. He's starring in the title role of Shakespeare's Othello at the Shakespeare The Catompreany in Washington , DC, we'll be right back after a break. This is fresh air . You know, I think anybody who knows you or even knows just a little bit about you knows that you are from New Orleans, you rep it very hard and you grew up in Ponta Train Park New Orleans . It sounds so idyllic . You had a pretty idyllic childhood, it sounds like. It was. I called I called Punch Train Park The Black Mayberry , you know It grew out of the civil rights movement when there was so many prohibitions where blacks could not participate in the expansion of post World War two you know, suburbia . And there was a movement to make sure that Black folks had access to homes and all and Punchetrain Park came out of sort of an appeasement it was separate but equal. Adjacent to Gentile Woods, which was a white neighborhood with the covenant of blacks couldn't move in . And they set aside another two hundred acres and replicated that neighborhood in Punchetrain Park. But right in the middle of it, Joseph Bartholomew designed a golf course, a little municipal golf course . And Joseph Bartholomew was an African American landscape architect who designed most of the courses in New Orleans at the time but couldn't play on them . So it was it was the ying and yang of fighting the ignorance of Jim Crow segregated New Orleans , but at the same time creating pockets of idyllic communities and Punchetrain Park was one of them and lawyers and doctors and teachers and janitors and the glassman, Mr. Wagner was a glassman . And Mr. Greenwood was the dry cleaner. So it was economic development and everybody's your mother and father and playground there at Southern University at New Orleans at a black historic black college right in the neighborhood. So it was really, really idyllic. Yeah, so many memories with you and your mom and your dad, your mom who was a schoolteacher , your siblings and she taught two blocks from two blocks from our home at College Elementary School where, I went to elementary school and for years I was just known as Mrs. Pearson's son because she was so beloved in the neighborhood and she was a part of a community . What was that like for you? What was that like for you though to be a child of a schoolteacher? Well, it was it was all of our teachers live in the neighborhood too. So the worst part about it is, you know, I would come home from school or come home from the playground and my mother 's sitting there with my second grade teacher and my third grade teacher and my fourth grade teacher. And you know, and they're having their cocktails after work. You know, so every all of my teachers I would see on a regular basis with my mom. I couldn't get away with anything. But it was great, you know, it was great. The community and it was totally destroyed by Katrina, one of the deepest parts of the flooding. And I knew how it was first built the civic advocacy that constructed Punchetrain Park and the Civil rights movement led by AP Turo, one of the great civil rights lawyers of New Orleans and my parents generation so I put out a clarion call to our generation after Katrin a saying we owe it to them , you know , we owe it to them to rebuild it. And so we have rebuilt it . Our neighborhood brick by brick, block by block, house by house, infuncture chain park is back. I later led an effort and we rebuilt forty homes . And that's where I li ve to this day. I'm still there in President Train Park . You wrote this book out of that devastation , The Wind in the Reeds in twenty fifteen. I mean, it's a memoir, but it also is this love letter to New Orleans that's so descriptive about your childhood, but then just about the city and the history. And there's a particular moment , you say, decades from now, little kids will ask Mr. Pears, what did you know about New Orleans' darkest hour ? And you will tell them. And that got me thinking about this quote that I'm kind of obsessed with right now from Brian Stevenson, where he said that basically our ancestors fought for freedom, our parents fought for civil rights, and our generation strugg is a narrative one , the honest accounting of what actually happened . And reading your book , I just felt echoes of that. I wonder how you feel about that idea because you're just so intentional in making sure that this story, particularly about New Orleans and Katrina, stays alive. It is the most important we have right now in our time in our generation . People are actively trying to erase who we are as a people I am only minutes away from the Pentagon as I speak right now , and I remember my father admiring General Chappy James, Benjamin Chappy James , and to know that they just removed painting from the Pentagon . And whatever reason they come up with , we all know the reason it's just racist and the idea of trying to eliminate any sort of contributions that the African American community has made to this country in the year that we try to celebrate two hundred fifty It's it is so insulting. It is so aggressively it feels like a visceral attack . My brother was purged out of his job here in Washington, D. C. I know so many people and it's and it's so many black women in particular this attack on minorities and women in a world where we are trying to where people are trying to erase them we realize that that is our call to duty of our generation , which is we know now that we have to mark our passing on the tree and declare who we are, who we were , what our accomplishments are and have been , and what we have created and exercise our right of self determination and declaration accomplishment . We owe that to our ancestors. We owe that to the generations yet to come because they're those who do not have our best interest at hearts. Wendell Pierce, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Wendell Pierce stars in Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D. C Tomorrow in fresh air, the rise of masculinism, how the movement, which is now mainstream, aims to fight feminism and restore the primacy of men. We speak with Helen Lewis, who writes about the movement in the Atlantic. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air Fresher's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldenado, Lauren Crinsel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Niko Gonzales Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Roberta Shirak directs the show with Terry Gross. I'm Tanya Mozley