{"id":115940,"date":"2025-09-03T15:14:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T15:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/115940\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T15:14:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T15:14:06","slug":"jeffrey-wright-dishes-on-the-batman-wes-anderson-and-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/115940\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Wright Dishes on ‘The Batman,’ Wes Anderson, and Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey Wright<\/a> has been in the acting game since the \u201990s, but the 2010s are really when Wright started to come into the limelight. From appearing in HBO dramas like Westworld<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Boardwalk Empire\u00a0to becoming a recurring Wes Anderson actor and starring in Spike Lee\u2019s latest movie Highest 2 Lowest,\u00a0Wright has become a very busy man, able to smoothly transition between genres and mediums.<\/p>\n

And in a new interview with Collider<\/a>, Wright looked back on his diverse career, dishing on\u00a0The Batman,\u00a0working with Anderson, and how an early James Bond classic helped inspire him as an actor.<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s respect for Anderson comes through clearly. Speaking about working on Anderson\u2019s 2025 movie The Phoenician Scheme, Wright said he first fell in love with Anderson\u2019s \u201clyrical, thoughtful\u201d writing style when they first teamed up on The French Dispatch, adding that he\u2019ll pretty much accept any part Anderson offers him\u2014without even reading the script. (He still does read the scripts, though.) Wright said he has an immense amount of \u201crespect and trust\u201d for Anderson, and equally appreciates \u201cthe trust he has in me in helping him to realize these various visions that he conjures up in his films.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s franchise parts, meanwhile, have challenged him to work \u201cin an authentic and organic way inside these established aesthetics,\u201d he told Collider. For example, when playing Felix in Daniel Craig\u2019s James Bond movies, Wright said he hoped to mirror the acting style of Jack Lord\u2014the first actor to play the character in 1962\u2019s Dr. No. But Wright also wanted to put his own distinct spin on Felix: \u201cThere\u2019s certain tweaks I made to the language to kind of reflect \u2018a brother from Langley,’\u201d he explained, \u201cand I dropped that in there for the duality it communicates.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006, Wright being cast as Felix wasn\u2019t a big deal, but flash forward to 2022, and that was very much not the case when he played Commissioner Gordon for The Batman<\/a>. News of Wright\u2019s casting caused a racist backlash that he first rebuffed<\/a> back in 2022\u2014but he remains (justifiably) annoyed about it. The situation was \u201cfucking racist and stupid. [\u2026] It\u2019s absent all logic,\u201d he told Collider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just so blind in a way that I find revealing to not recognize that the evolution of these films reflects the evolution of society,\u201d Wright said, adding \u201cthat somehow it\u2019s defiling this franchise not to keep it grounded in the cultural reality of 1939 when the comic books were first published.\u201d Even stories need to reflect the real diversity in today\u2019s world, he said, although he added that when he gets involved in projects, he feels \u201cthat I own these stories as much as anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read the full interview here<\/a> to get more of Wright\u2019s thoughts on Westworld\u2019s cultural staying power, how he got his start in acting, and more. And if you can\u2019t wait to see more of Wright, he\u2019s set to appear in upcoming film The Wizard of the Kremlin\u00a0and will return in\u00a0The Last of Us\u00a0season three\u2014and of course, The Batman Part II.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Wright has been in the acting game since the \u201990s, but the 2010s are really when Wright…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,82152,344,46631,44306],"class_list":{"0":"post-115940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-jeffrey-wright","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-the-batman","14":"tag-the-batman-part-ii"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}