‘American Fiction’ Trailer: Jeffrey Wright Stars In Cord Jefferson’s Acclaimed Comedy

There was a big party last night ahead of the Golden Globes!

The Hollywood awards season kicks into full gear this weekend with Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony, and actors are pondering how to enjoy the onslaught of attention and survive the ups and downs.Britain’s Carey Mulligan, a two-time Oscar nominee who is vying this year for a Best Actress Golden Globe for her role in “Maestro,” cuts to the chase: “Oh, just enjoy it and have fun and don’t take it too seriously.”Mulligan said she is delighted by what she calls “a lovely sisterhood” of actresses nominated this year, including Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, Lily Gladstone and Greta Lee.Oscar-winning Stone, nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe for “Poor Things,” acknowledged that the awards season is both “very nerve-wracking and very exciting.”On the arrivals line at the Palm Springs Film Festival this week, Golden Globe nominees shared their mix of elation, disorientation, and the need to take care of one’s mind, body, and spirit. The season runs through the Oscars on March 10 and includes several awards show stops and countless interviews.“It is a lot of attention on the project, that’s good, but at the same time I can understand how someone can get a little sideways with this runaway circus,” said Jeffrey Wright, nominated for best actor for “American Fiction,” adding, “I want our film to be seen.”Colman Domingo, vying for his first Golden Globe for best actor in “Rustin,” said the advice he gets from actors who have been through the awards season is to focus on self-care.“So don’t think about who is winning, don’t think about those things,” Domingo said.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph is one of the biggest breakout stars of the year and she’s getting a lot of awards love right now!

Stuart Miller Hollywood being what it is, “This Is Us” star Sterling K. Brown has spent years deflecting roles to yet again play “a Black guy in a white family who’s finding his way in.” Brown said no because he’s adamant about not getting pigeonholed, as he demonstrated this year by shifting to “Biosphere,” a post-apocalyptic two-hander with Mark Duplass, and then “American Fiction,” which is simultaneously a family drama, a meta-literary satire and a commentary on race in America today. “I wouldn’t want to do three movies in a row with the same kind of role,” he says.

th year, Variety’s annual 10 Directors to Watch highlights some of the most promising and creative young filmmakers in the entertainment industry. Presented this year (as we have for the last several) at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, our list is as full of promising up-and-comers as ever, with at least three directors whose work has already staked a claim during the 2023-2024 awards season, and several with films that are set to premiere at Sundance, Berlin and other spring festivals.

Jeffrey Wright is recalling the time he did not censor himself for the film Ride with the Devil.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jeffrey Wright‘s latest stop on his “American Fiction” press tour was a cast interview with Entertainment Weekly in which he shocked his co-stars with a story about how he once refused a studio’s request to censor his dialogue. The Emmy winner starred in Ang Lee’s 1999 Civil War drama “Ride With the Devil” as a former slave fighting for his freedom. “In this scene in which he has this kind of the apex of his awakening and his need to emancipate himself, he says, ‘Being that man’s friend was no more than being his n—–.

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with writer-director Cord Jefferson‘s feature film debut American Fiction.

Hello, and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Who says you can’t laugh and win Oscars, too? In a stunning year for cinema, the candidates for the coveted best picture category are overflowing with prime comedic endeavors that surpass their dramatic counterparts. From a toy doll to an author with a triumphant “Black book” to a reverse Frankenstein tale that shows a whole lot of sex, the Academy has an opportunity to invite the softer side of cinema to its ceremony.

Cord Jefferson As part of Variety‘s 100 Greatest Television Shows of All Time issue, we asked 12 of our favorite creators of television to discuss the series that inspire and move them. Check out all the essays, and read our full list of the best TV shows ever made. I have a theory that “Succession” was the first British sitcom to achieve popularity in the U.S., and it did so by convincing people it was a drama.

EXCLUSIVE: The Black Film Critics Circle (BFCC) has voted American Fiction Best Film of 2023, Aunjanue Ellie-Taylor Best Actress and Jefferey Wright Best Actor for their work in Origin and American Fiction respectively. And for Best Director Cord Jefferson for American Fiction. The announcement was made today by Mike Sargent, co-president, BFCC. Votes were cast and tabulated in New York City at the organization’s annual meeting on December 18, 2023.

Andrew Haigh’s drama All of Us Strangers has landed nine London Critics’ Circle Awards nominations, ahead of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which has scored seven.

We had a question for Jeffrey Wright, but we knew we had to be careful with it. The star of Cord Jefferson‘s award-season darling, “American Fiction,” is in the running for a Best Actor Oscar nomination and has already won several critics’ group awards.

EXCLUSIVE: Laura Karpman was drip-fed jazz notes when she was a baby. Her mother’s turn-table featured a playlist that included Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Wes Montgomery and Thelonious Monk, the virtuoso pianist, whose music informs and underpins her own jazz-infused score for Cord Jefferson’s scorching American Fiction.

Searchlight Pictures’ Poor Things had a monster of an expansion, sewing up $1.3 million at just 82 theaters for a no. 10 spot at the weekend box office. American Fiction and The Zone of Interest, from, respectively, Amazon MGM Studios and A24, opened nicely as specialty films with original stories of all kinds are seeing traction with ticket buyers.

Angelique Jackson Erika Alexander got her start as a teen on “The Cosby Show” before assuming the breakout role of attorney Maxine Shaw on “Living Single.” But it’s her latest performance in “American Fiction,” a satire that critiques our culture’s obsession with stereotypes, that’s put her in a conversation she’s never been in before — that of awards season contender. Alexander plays Coraline, the love interest of Jeffrey Wright’s Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a cantankerous author who challenges the industry’s perceptions of “Black entertainment.” On Dec. 5, just hours before sitting down with Variety, Alexander learned she’d been nominated in the supporting category at the Independent Spirit Awards; she attended last year’s ceremony as a guest.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” has won rave reviews and is tipped to be an Oscars favorite with its satirical portrayal of the exploitation of Black people in media, balanced with sharp comedy and a punch of emotional family drama. Jefferson credits his editor, Hilda Rasula, with striking the right tone for the film. “The thing I appreciate about Hilda is that she never lies, she’s very honest, and she tells me when she doesn’t like something,” Jefferson tells Variety.

Jeffrey Wright and Taraji P. Henson sit down to discuss their acclaimed performances — as cantankerous novelist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in “American Fiction” and sensuous singer Shug Avery in “The Color Purple” — Wright is eager to address one topic first: their shared hometown. It turns out both acting titans hail from Washington, D.C.

Variety FYC Fest on Dec. 6 in Los Angeles. Variety‘s senior awards editor Clayton Davis, Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay and Senior Entertainment & Media Writer Matt Donnelly moderated several panels throughout the event.