*Another actor was hired to dub Jeffrey Wright’s voice in director Ang Lee’s 1999 film “Ride with the Devil” after he refused to censor the N-word in a scene.
In the film, Wright plays a former slave fighting on the side of the Confederacy. In one scene, his character says the N-word and the studio later asked Wright to censor the slur for the “airplane version” of the film.
Wright explained why he refused the request during Entertainment Weekly‘s “Around the Table” series with his “American Fiction” co-stars.
“I said, ‘Nah. Nah, it’s not happening,'” Wright states in the YouTube clip above. “And I headed out the door and to my car, and they found some other actor to come in and do that one word, apparently, so that the airplane folk would be comfy in the darkness of their own ignorance around the language of race.”
Meanwhile, you can currently catch Wright in “American Fiction,” a film that “confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes,” per the official synopsis, People reports.
The satirical drama is based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” with Wright playing the character, Monk, described as “a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from ‘Black’ entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes.”
“To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish ‘Black’ book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain,” the synopsis continues.
Directed by Cord Jefferson, the film also stars Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, and Sterling K. Brown.
“American Fiction” is currently in limited release and will expand in theaters this month. Watch the trailer below.
READ MORE: Jeffrey Wrights’ Emotional Connection to ‘American Fiction’ Character | WATCH
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