Wendell Pierce is a proud journeyman actor
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, actor Wendell Pierce, is taking on a part he's wanted to play for years, Shakespeare's Othello, one of the most demanding roles ever written for the stage. The classic is a story of a celebrated military leader who is slowly manipulated into doubting his own wife. until jealousy and deception consume him. Pierce is known to many as Detective Buck Moreland on The Wire and Antoine Batiste on HBO's Treme. On Broadway, he became the first Black actor to play Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman, earning a 2023 Tony nomination for the role. His range these days runs just as wide. A police captain on CBS's Elspeth, a CIA officer in Jack Ryan Ghost War, and a villain in Raising Canaan on Starz.
He plays Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. until June 28th. Wendell Pierce, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you for having me, Tanya.
Okay, so we are talking just a few hours before you go on stage there in D.C. as Othello. And what is your head like a few hours before you take on this role?
Oh, it's really rest and relaxation because I have a couple of hours that I have to prepare for.
What motivated Wendell Pierce to take on the role of Othello?
But I try to relax and warm up and mind, body, and spirit prepare for the journey. You know, I always think of these roles, you know, these iconic roles and large roles, like the beginning of a hike up Mount Everest. So I'm at base camp at this time of the day.
That's a good analogy or metaphor, whatever you want to call it. Because, I mean, this role you said has challenged you like few ever have. What is it about Othello?
Well, first of all, just the playwright himself, Mr. William Shakespeare, is a great challenge. You know, I try to do the trifecta, as I call it, do television and film and theater shows. every year, you know, the great trifecta and all of the different mediums. But I think I'm going to expand that to quartet because I would like to do a Shakespeare every year if I can because, first of all, the detective work, I call it, of mining the text for all of its understanding and everything that Shakespeare was doing It's telling you not only about the characters, but how to portray them and what's happening. And that's in the verse in the iambic pentameter, but it's also in the onomatopoeia of... the words sounding like what they are, the monosyllabic words denoting a slower pace and the opposite being true, multisyllabic words at a faster pace.
That's just the technical aspect of doing a classical text like that. And then you have... the emotional work that you have to do, and the connection with the other actors and characters, and the love that I have for Desdemona. And actually, the discovery in this role is the love that I have for Iago, which has been key for opening up Othello for me. Normally, he is just seen as the villain and manipulated by Iago, but actually... he is, that is a part of the love story too. He is, in my interpretation, he is the person that I've known and loved and trusted all of my life because I'm orphaned. I am an outsider and I'm orphaned since a small child. And so you build that up and then you have to have the physical and then
the vocal strength for a three-hour production. So the challenge is physical, it's intellectual, and it's emotional.
You mentioned a little bit ago that you do a trifecta every year, but is that an intentional thing that you're making for yourself? This year I'm going to make sure I'm doing one of these three things, now the fourth one, making sure that you do a Shakespeare play.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm in the third act of my career, I think, you know, and I'm challenging myself.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:49
2
What motivated Wendell Pierce to take on the role of Othello?
1:49–8:46
3
How does Wendell Pierce prepare for a demanding role like Othello?
8:46–12:15
4
What does Wendell Pierce mean by the 'trifecta' of acting?
12:15–23:11
5
What challenges did Wendell Pierce face while portraying Othello?
23:11–47:32
Speakers
8 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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