Jeffrey Wright on Du Bois, Black Erasure and Bill Maher Saying Celebs Should Stay Silent on Politics

追加: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01]There is a new film uh coming out. It's going to premiere on PBS. We love PBS here uh this Tuesday, May 19th at 900 PM Eastern Standard Time. We do De Boy Rebel with a Cause. I love that title.

[00:00:15]Uh it is powerful and it's narrated by so many incredible people including Biola Davis, uh Common, Courtney B.

[00:00:23]Vance, and the one and only Mr. Jeffrey Wright who is here now. Welcome to the show, Mr. All right. How you feeling?

[00:00:31]>> I'm good, Clay. Thanks, uh, thanks for having me.

[00:00:34]>> Oh, thank you for being here. Uh, I love that you're narrating uh part of uh part of this this documentary on web deo.

[00:00:43]What part of his story feels especially urgent for 2026? We are in a crazy time right now.

[00:00:54]>> Well, yes. What's happening right now is this attempt at eraser, this attempt to disappear um black people uh from the historical record. Uh there's a mythologizing right now that the founding of America was overwhelmingly Anglo Protestant. You'll even hear some, and it goes back to an historian up at Harvard named Samuel Huntington who wrote a book called Who We Are. I think it was 2004. But you'll you'll hear his uh description of early America. You'll hear it echoed now through uh certain uh uh you know politicians on the right that America was primarily Anglo Protestant to the point that it was 98% Anglo Protestant at its founding. They disregard the fact that for example in Virginia, in colonial Virginia, which was the most populous uh and populous and prosperous prosperous of of the colonies, Virginia was 40% black, right? you had uh Mississippi, Alabama, all of these wealthy southern states in the areas in which most of their wealth was being produced, many of those areas were majority black populations. And yet there's still this idea that we contributed nothing culturally, economically uh to the foundation of this country, but we were here.

[00:02:49]We have been here. We will be here. You can't erase that from the reality. You can attempt to erase our story. What the boys was doing was saying, "No, you don't understand this country unless you understand the journey of black people in America." Not simply because we're black and we need to tell our stories, but because the the magnitude of the contribution to black Americans to the strengthening of this country is unmatched.

[00:03:26]When you talk about the um the the the contributions, for example, of coerced black labor to the industrial revolution at its start, it's unmatched. It rivals the contributions of the tech sector today in real economic terms. When you talk about uh the contributions of black Americans, enslaved people, former enslaved people to the effort to win the Civil War, to the efforts to support the Union Army, not only with 200,000 black combatants, but also with a further 300,000 who had fled plantations to northern positions to offer one first for refuge, but then to offer labor and support and assistance, whether it be through growing food to support the Union cause, whether it be as spies, whether it be as other types of laborers.

[00:04:28]These contributions were key to the winning of the war. And yet we are told, well, you know, uh you know, my people fought and died for for for your freedom. Nonsense. It's all in the historical record. You know, uh Abe Lincoln freed the slaves. Nonsense.

[00:04:46]black people were freeing themselves prior to the emancipation proclamation.

[00:04:52]What do the boys calls a general strike was undertaken whereby they were fleeing the plantations, they were going to northern positions. What it does I think for me is it just gives you the tools for which to carve out your position as a citizen of this country which is being challenged. It's history echoing itself. And do the boys is ah man he is the greatest the greatest not black American one of the greatest American agents for delivering the truth about who we are and uh and and celebrating us celebrating us and uh and also providing us tool to tools for surv survival. Your filmography is incredible. You have played Bosat. Uh you have played Bobby Seal. You have played Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Uh you have played uh Coen Pal. Uh you've played Muddy Waters. Uh you've played so many uh incredible real people. And I'm just wondering, is there a particular one outside of narrating uh this PBS documentary on the boys, is there a particular one that a p a particular icon that you play that stays with you and haunts you in a good way all these years later?

[00:06:22]>> Um I think they all, you know, stay with me in part uh to some degree. um even as you know just artistic exercises if if I don't always agree. I wasn't always in agreement with Colon Powell uh you know but uh but I think you know it was important to be a part of telling his story uh as it related to uh you know the Bush administration.

[00:06:53]I guess if I could choose or had to choose one, I would say Jean Michelle Bosad. Uh, one because it was so early in my career. It was such a um, it was such in some ways a personal story for me. Not that I, you know, not that I am him, but I I I related deeply to him as a young creative person in New York. uh trying to find his way and express his voice.

[00:07:25]>> Uh there's been a lot of critiques of celebrities speaking out in this time.

[00:07:31]Bill Maher is somebody who's complained about it that it hurts the Democratic brand when celebrities speak out. You've been doing this before the current administration, been doing this since the beginning of your career really. But what is your response to people who say celebrities shouldn't speak out? They should just, you know, perform for the camera, perform on stage and that's it.

[00:07:50]What is Bill Maher if not a celebrity?

[00:07:53]>> Well, there's that, too.

[00:07:55]>> Um, yeah. I mean, I don't think that anyone has an obligation to speak if they're a celebrity. I think we all have all of us have an obligation to be engaged right now as citizens.

[00:08:12]And I think we have an obligation to and this is very difficult to be as informed as we possibly can be to be to to be informed so as to be uh you know impactful and effective. That's a real challenge right now. So it's a challenge not only for celebrities to understand what it is they're talking about but for all of us because of the nature of of information flows. Now, social media is an absolute chaotic mess. Our politics is more now about performance than it is about governance. It's more reality TV meets, you know, carnival sideshow now, you know, particularly at the federal level. And there's so much disinformation, misinformation that flies past that becomes amplified, you know, online that it's really hard to to to have a perspective that you can express because it's it's so difficult to get a handle on what the hell is happening. Um, for me, the thing that's been most clarifying again is to go back and and read books get you know most of the news sources are compromised in in in whatever ways or biased or you know propagandized but if you go back and re I found anyway going back and reading the history I've been reading the history of industrial revolution reading the history of authoritarianism these things and authoritarian impulses these things have helped provide a framework for me to me for me to for understanding you know the the the the current politics So again, yeah, you you know, I don't think you know, you don't need to say you need to be informed and if you are a celebrity, you know, who happens to be informed, by all means, get on your soap box, you know, about you you have an obligation as uh as a citizen. And you know, think this is another American idea, too.

[00:10:24]You know, we talk about movies in terms of the money that they make, you know, rather than the quality of the storytelling, the quality of the film.

[00:10:34]Um, celebrity speaks to me about that.

[00:10:39]That's a cog in a business.

[00:10:42]Artists um to my mind um are commenting on the world through their work. It may not be political. It may be comments that are about, you know, more personal things, but we don't have any other stories to tell but stories about our societies, you know, our communities. So, that's that's that's at the core of the nature of what we do. And if that carries o over into you know speaking about uh you know the political climate particularly now when so many aspects of our country are under assault by ignorance and arrogance and corruption at the top and yeah by all means talk by all means speak on it but but do so in a way that uh that is informed and is uh is helpful I think additive to the discourse.