Everybody is talking about “American Fiction.”
The debut feature from writer/director Cord Jefferson, an Emmy winner for his work on HBO’s “Watchmen,” “American Fiction” stars Jeffrey Wright as a college professor who is juggling a family that is barely keeping it together with a literary prank that goes horribly (or is that wonderfully?) awry. And you can learn more about the movie (which won the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festvial) thanks to a new featurette that you can watch above.
“When I started writing this movie it was just a script and a dream and that was it. The minute Jeffrey signed on that would be enough to make me happy but to add in this amazing cast, I’m forever grateful for that,” Jefferson said in the featurette. The movie’s all-star cast also includes Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, John Ortiz and Leslie Uggams.
“It’s all about the collaboration,” Wright said in the featurette. “It’s been a really wonderful one.”
Wright’s Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is put on academic leave and returns home to deal with his family, which includes his mother (Uggams) dealing with health issues and a brother (Brown) embracing his new lifestyle as a gay man. He also falls in love with a neighbor (Erika Alexander) and, frustrated that his own book isn’t getting picked up, creates a more stereotypically “Black” book under a pseudonym that winds up being a bestseller.
“American Fiction” is in select theaters now and additional cities on Friday. It will be going wide in January.
