Wendell Pierce says there's a joke actors have about the five stages of their careers:
"There's 'Who is Wendell Pierce?' 'Get me Wendell Pierce.' 'Get me someone like Wendell Pierce.' 'Get me a younger Wendell Pierce.' And then the last and final and fifth stage is: 'Who is Wendell Pierce?'" he says.
After starring roles on The Wire and Treme, and a 2023 Tony Award nomination as the first Black actor to play Willy Loman in the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, Pierce is working as hard as ever. He says he's motivated by the "ticking clock of mortality" — but also by the desire to challenge himself as an actor.
Though many entertainers shy away from the label "journeyman actor," Pierce proudly embraces the term: "It's not just to go from job to job, but [to] be intentional about the jobs I take," he says. "I try to do the trifecta, as I call it — television and film and theater — every year."
Pierce currently plays a captain on CBS' Elsbeth and a CIA officer in the film Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War. He's also starring in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Othello in Washington, D.C.
Pierce likens tackling Shakespeare to detective work. First, he says, there's the "mining the text for all of its understanding and everything that Shakespeare is telling you not only about the characters, but how to portray them and what's happening."
More than that, though, there's also the emotional aspect of connecting with the character — and the physical and vocal strength required of a three-hour production. "The challenge is physical, it's intellectual, and it's emotional, and that's the great thing about doing Shakespeare, and even specifically doing Othello," Pierce says. "I always think of these ... iconic roles and large roles like the beginning of a hike up Mount Everest."
Interview highlights
On how many years ago, jazz helped him crack the code on Shakespeare
I went to the club to hear Arthur Blythe, a great alto saxophonist. And he's pretty avant-garde, but he had this really hip, swinging tune. I was humming along with it. And then he went into his solo, which was free and wild and all over the place. And I was just looking around the club, still humming the song in my head. And when he finished his solo, we were right exactly on the same note in the melody of the song.
And that's when I had this epiphany that while he was free and wild and doing his solo, he was aware of the structure of the song, and knew exactly where he was at all times, and came back to it. So he was free within the form, and then I understood that's what Shakespeare is like: To have freedom within the form, don't allow the verse to constrict you, but let it be the guard rails of where you're supposed to be. But you have the opportunity to take it wherever you would like to take it. That's really what all great art is about, a merger of technical proficiency and expression, and unlimited expression, but being able to be technically proficient and exact. And that opened up Shakespeare to me, that night, in September, 1981, in New York, listening to jazz at the Village Vanguard.
On why he almost quit The Wire
During the course of The Wire, people would challenge us all the time — "You are only demonstrating the thuggery and the crime and you're perpetuating this idea that, the stereotype that Black folks are criminally inclined and violent and all."
I remember a woman on the train challenging me, African American woman who worked on Wall Street. And I said, "I accept your criticism. … I welcome the challenge and the criticism so I can make sure that we don't fall victim to that criticism. ... But we have judges, the mayor, the president of the city council, the city council members, police officers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, who are all African American. But you're only seeing the criminals. Imagine how tough it is for a little kid in those neighborhoods. They don't see the lawyers or the doctors. If you don't see them as an educated woman, a professional, and you can only see the thuggery, imagine how susceptible those young kids are to it. And that's what we're trying to tell and the story we're trying to tell."
Now, in the fourth season, I almost quit because at our wrap party a young lady comes up to me. She says, "Mr. Pierce, I was on the show this year. I really wanted to work with you. We didn't have anything together. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your work and all." And I said, "Who did you play?" And she says, "I look younger than I am, so I was one of the kids in the middle school." … She played this out of control young woman who slashes another girl's face. … She was like, "I'm going to Brown University on full scholarship."
And I thought to myself, why are we not telling your story? ... And I thought about the criticism and I said, that woman was right. And I said, I should leave the show because we're perpetuating a stereotype. And then the episode came on for the fourth season and it was so impactful. And we see exactly where we lose our kids. And we see that inflection point where we can save them and put them on the right track. And where we make them the young woman who goes to Brown on a full scholarship, and where we lose them and send them into that pipeline, into the penal system, and calling our dysfunction out in our society that creates the criminality, that doesn't celebrate the education of this young woman going to school and all. So it wasn't arbitrary, and then that's the only thing that made me come back.
On taking care of his late father in his last 10 years
He was two months away from his 99th birthday. He passed in my hands, we were holding hands. I was there with him. I had my father for a long time. I got closer to my father in the last 10 years of his life than I ever had before. My mother passed, and one of her dying wishes was, "Wendell, take care of your father." She knew. While I was working in Budapest, if I got four days off, I would go home to New Orleans, and spend time with him. It was a blessing. I was traveling the world and being an actor and at the same time my home base is New Orleans, and here I would have my father with me for all those years and he was fuel to my fire. He was reminding me of everything that he taught me and as I attack these challenges of these great roles and the different roles that I play, he is very much in my process.
This is a man who fought in [the Battle of] Saipan in World War II, fought for the country that he loved when this country wasn't loving him back and came back and his voting rights weren't even protected and here he was risking his life in The Double V campaign in the Black community — victory abroad and victory at home. So he very much believed in that.
On the erasure of Black history
The idea of trying to eliminate any sort of contributions that the African-American community has made to this country in the year that we try to celebrate 250 — it is so insulting. … It feels like a visceral attack.
My brother was purged out of his job here in Washington, D.C. I know so many people and so many Black women in particular, this attack on minorities and women in a world where people are trying to erase them, we realize that that is our call to duty of our generation. We know now that we have to mark our passing on the tree and declare who we are, who we were, what our accomplishments are and have been and what we have created. And exercise our right of self-determination and declaration of accomplishment. We owe that to our ancestors, we owe that to the generations yet to come because there are those who do not have our best interest at heart.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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