Jeffrey Wright explains how he began working with Wes Anderson
In 2021, American actor Jeffrey Wright appeared in Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch alongside an impressive ensemble of other acclaimed actors. Since then, he has reunited with the director, and plenty of his previous co-stars, to feature in Asteroid City.
The movie, which premieres at Cannes Film Festival on May 23rd, is set for release in the United States on June 16th. Speaking to Deadline, Wright explained how he ended up collaborating with Anderson.
“I first got involved in the somewhat usual fashion when my agent reached out and said that Wes would like to meet me,” he said. “This was, oh, I guess — geez, time is so strange now, since the pandemic — four or five years ago. My agent said that Wes would like to meet me to talk about an upcoming project he had planned, in which he’d written a part with me in mind.”
“As it turned out, I was travelling with my kids to Paris later that week, and Wes was living in Paris at the time. We met at a cafe in Saint-Germain and talked about The French Dispatch and the character of Roebuck Wright. And I found out over lunch that he had seen pretty much every play I’d ever done in New York,” he added.
“I was very touched by that, and surprised because I hadn’t met him backstage after any of those shows. And it was very gratifying to know that he had taken the time to do that, and that, after having taken in my work over so many years, he’d kept me in mind with the intent to work with me someday. And so, The French Dispatch was the beginning of our working relationship.”