Source CodeAn Interview with Jeffrey Wright
by Wilson Morales
March 30, 2011
From playing James Bond’s colleague Felix Leiter, to portraying real-life figures (Jean Michel Basquiat, Muhammad Ali’s biographer Howard Bingham, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., General Colin Powell, Muddy Waters), Jeffrey Wright‘s film roles are always set in different places and different time periods.
In his latest film, ‘Source Code,’ the Washington D.C native gets to work in a project that involves time travel.
When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the ‘Source Code,’ a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.
In speaking with BlackVoices.com, Wright says the opportunity to work with director Duncan Jones was part of the attraction to taking on the project.
“Duncan Jones’ first film ‘Moon’ handled technology and science fiction ideas in a really fresh way, I thought. So I was attracted to the idea of working with him. I was attracted to working with him on this because, obviously, there were some of the same types of themes and conventions at work in this script, as well. It gives you a lot of room to play and it’s are exciting. The technology that he is actually touching on certain thinking that’s going on now in the world of quantum physics and in the world of quantum mechanics. It’s a good fertile for a sci-fi thriller.
Unlike his co-star Gyllenhaal, whose character has to relive the same scene over and over until his mission is accomplished, Wright’s role has him overseering it from the compound. In fact, he hardly had any scenes with the actor.
“My character is very much a bit of a self-obsessed kind of tinkerer. High tech tinkerer. And I have to say he’s a guy who is not the most socially adept guy in the room. So I had a good time exploring his obsession and his awkwardness. I worked with an image of Jake’s character or the idea of him because we communicate with him through the pictures, the aperture of a camera lens. So that actually yielded an interesting perspective on his performance which I think is wonderfully sympathetic and charismatic. And so if Jake was around, but I only worked with the idea of him and both the guy in person and the idea of him are good. And I enjoyed my encounter with both versions of Jake.
Besides doing theater, films, and raising a family with his wife, actress Carmen Ejojo, Wright has found some time to chair his non-profit organization, the Taia Peace Foundation.
“The Taia Peace Foundation is a group that’s been focused on economic development initiatives in Sierra Leone. It is the corporate social responsibility for our company. Taia Lion, as in the cat, Taia Lion. We just traveled to Sierra Leone last month to celebrate the foundation’s largest project to date, which was the rehabilitation of an eighteen mile farm to market road in serving one of the remotest corners of the country. What we’re attempting to do is combine the ideas of commercial endeavors with philanthropic sensibilities. So that we create an engine for economic growth within the areas of operation and also, simultaneous, create sustainability for our social endeavors, as well. We’re trying to veer away from of the historic trends in Africa of an absence of or a neglect of local community needs when tied to commercial activity. At the same time we’re veering away from this perception that charity, in and of itself, is a viable solution to some of the challenges that face the continent. The website is www.taiapeace.org.
Wright’s next film projects has him working an old colleague and a three-time Academy Award nominated and Tony Award winning director.
“I just recently finished shooting ‘Ides of March’ in which I played a senator with presidential aspirations. That was directed by George Clooney, who also stars in it. And I am now on my way to begin my first day, in fact my first scene, of ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ which will be directed by Stephen Daldry. It’s based on a novel. I play a gentleman named William Black who helps a young boy who has lost his father in 9/11 discover some secrets that he’s trying to unravel. I’m shooting that in New York.”
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