Jeffrey Wright was dubbed by another actor after refusing to censor n-word

Jeffrey Wright has revealed that another actor was brought in to overdub him after he refused to censor his own use of the n-word in Ang Lee’s revisionist Civil War western Ride with the Devil.

Wright was reminded of the incident from 1999 while reading the opening scene of his new literature satire American Fiction.

“I’ll tell you something related specifically to that first scene [in American Fiction] and understanding the meaning, or meanings, of the n-word,” Wright told his co-stars Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K Brown, and Erika Alexander as part of an Entertainment Weekly roundtable discussion.

“I did a movie called Ride with the Devil, and it was a film about the Civil War where I was playing a freedman, or actually a former slave working to free himself, but doing that on the side of the Confederacy, based on historical figures,” explained Wright. “This took place in the Kansas-Missouri Border War, outside of the regular army.

“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*****. And I will never again be anyone’s n*****.’ It’s such a self-empowering statement and understanding of the word.

“The studio at the time was so conflicted about ‘How do we market it?’ Ultimately they decided, we don’t need to market this at all.”

“Further, we’ll make it available for video, but take that character, Jeffrey Wright, off the poster to keep it a little more palatable for whoever their target audience is in Iowa, or wherever, at least in their mind.”

“Then they had me come do the airplane version of dialogue. There were a few curse words and this and that, and then with the word n***** they said: ‘We’d like to change that to negro,’ or whatever the choice was. And I said, ‘Nah. That’s not happening.’

“I headed out the door to my car. And they found some other actor to come in and do that one word, apparently, so that the airplane folk would be comfy in the darkness of their own ignorance around the language of race. It was so crazy.”

American Fiction, which is based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, explores issues around racial language and stereotypes. Wright stars as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, an author who writes a novel full of harmful tropes as a joke, only to see it become a bestseller.

The film is the feature directorial debut of Cord Jefferson, who won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for his work on 2019’s Watchmen.

American Fiction is in cinemas now.