18 ★ FT Weekend 19 October/20 October 2019
H
enry, are you left-handed?”
“Henry, play a solo... ”
“Hey, Henry, have you
read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new
b o ok?” “Henry, now
you’ve put something in my head.”
“When you come to New Orleans,
Henry... ”
Most famous people know how to
tell stories about themselves. But Wen-
dell Pierce knows something more —
how to wrap you, the listener, into the
narrative. Even if you had never seen
him on stage or screen, you would real-
ise within minutes that he is a first-
class performer.
Pierce is best known as Bunk More-
land from theHBO seriesThe Wire—
a weary, womanising detective whose
mouth could emit cigar smoke and
blunt bonhomie simultaneously. “The
Bunk is strictly a shirt-and-tie moth-
erf**ker,” ran one of his most memor-
able lines.
Pierce is also a shirt-and-tie aficio-
nado; when we meet, he has a spare tie
in his pocket for good measure. But if
the role of Bunk has defined his career, it
is far from the limit of his ambitions.
This month he returns to the London
stage as Willy Loman, the lead in Arthur
Miller’s classicDeath of a Salesman. The
production, which premiered at the
Young Vic in the summer, is his first UK
role — and the first time that London has
had a black Loman. Its initial run
received a host offive-star reviews,
including from the Financial Times.
Seventy years after the play firstpre-
miered,Death of a Salesman emains ar
crushing critique of American capital-
ism. But with a black anti-hero, it also
becomes a tale of racism — and
“how destructive that is to the spirit of
the individual”, says Pierce.
So it makes the play even more
depressing, I suggest. He laughs. “It can
be. [But] entertainment is a by-product
of art. It’s not the purpose of art. We’ve
come to a place where it’s an expect-
ation — ‘I want to be entertained by a
piece of art, instead of challenged.’ ”
This is the second thing you realise
about Wendell Pierce. He is not just
charm and delivery and smart dressing;
he is truly serious. In Pierce’s vision, art
“changes people’s humanity, it changes
the air in the room, it changes every-
thing. People always ask me, ‘Well, give
me an example of that.’ ”
Then, sat in an armchair, with a coffee
in one hand, Pierce embarks on the
story ofCharles L Black, a white lawyer
from Texas, who saw Louis Armstrong
play jazz in 1931, and two decades later
joined the legal team that would help
tear down racial segregation.
“He always talked about how he had
never seen genius in a black man
before,” Pierce says. “I like to think that
moment of art was the thing that
changed his humanity — that it was not
just an intellectual decision.”
For Pierce, as for many African-
Americans, the American ideal has
remained a promise, rather than a real-
ity. The daily encounters with prejudice.
Donald Trump. The neo-Nazi rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia. “You raise the
veil and you see that the barbarians
were always at the gate,” he says.
On the plane to the UK for this visit,
he was practising his lines in first class.
“The steward comes by and says no
internet calls. She says, ‘Who are you
talking to?’ I said, ‘I’m not talking to
anybody.’ And she just wouldn’t believe
me... I didn’t want to go there. But I
knew it was racial. It’s just that insidi-
ous thing.”
Where did it all go wrong? “The ugli-
ness of humanity is a chronic disease.
It’s a part of our nature. That was the
most offensive thing about people say-
ing, ‘Oh, now with Barack Obama, we’re
post-racial,’” he says. “I think art is a
more profound way to have that conver-
sation. Because art changes hearts and
minds, where laws only change behav-
iour.” Through his acting, through his
storytelling, Pierce wants to bring usface to face with our prejudices, while
controlling his own fury. At the age of 55,
he feels the same biological anxiety as
Willy Loman. “I got 20 summers left.
That’s how I look at it now.” He turns to
an imagined aggressor: “At this stage of
my life, I have 20 summers left. I’m not
going to waste any time onyou.”Wendell Pierce was born in New Orle-
ans in December 1963. His mother was
a schoolteacher; his father, now aged
94, is an army veteran, who kept his
own talent as a photographer
under wraps and warned his son against
becoming an actor.
Pierce attributes his career path to the
Free Southern Theater, a travelling
group of black actors linked to the civil
rights movement. “[My parents] would
come back and tell me the stories. And I
revered them. They made me want to be
an actor.”
His seriousness — his belief that
actors “should always be kinda activ-
ists” — reflects that tradition. “In that
sense, I am New Orleans and New Orle-
ans is me,” he says. Pierce attended the
New Orleans Center for Creative Arts,
where there was relentless peer pres-
sure to study.
“We asked, ‘Henry, are you shed-
ding?’ Meaning, ‘Are you practising?’”
he recalls. He started accumulating
screen credits from the mid-1980s, but
felt like an imposter. There was a long
slog untilDavid Simon’sThe Wire ireda
in 2002.
Pierce and many of the cast thought
the show — with its fog of slang and char-
acters — was destined to fail. In fact,
along withThe Sopranos nda Mad Men, it
kickstarted thegolden age of television.
His own role pushed him, an African-American who had experienced police
discrimination, into a more ambiguous
relationship with law enforcement.
How much does Pierce have in com-
mon with Bunk Moreland? “Bunk
wouldn’t be going to museums and
hearing music and all that stuff. Just a
good drink and a cigar. What we share is
he’s a student of police work, he’s a crim-
inologist. The drive of, like, I may be a
f**k-up, but I know I’m good at this one
thing.”
Pierce, too, felt good at one thing —
acting. But, in 2005, midway through
The Wire, Hurricane Katrina hit, and the
poorly kept levees unleashed an almost
biblical flood on his home city. Thus
began a new phase in his life, laced with
attempts to guide the city’s rebirth.
He starred as a womanising trombon-
ist inTreme, another David Simon TV
creation for HBO. It’s a beautiful por-
trait of a city, although it lackedThe
Wire’s sensational brutality and there-
fore its impact.
For Pierce, however, it achieved what
he wanted: “It has become a cultural
document.” (Pierce’s love of jazz is no
act. “Ronnie Scott’s is my hang here in
London.”)
Meanwhile, Pierce entered into a mix
of business and philanthropic projects
with a childhood friend called Troy
Henry — building houses in his family’s
neighbourhood, opening grocery stores
in areas without access to fresh veget-
ables, even chairing Henry’s mayoral
campaigns.
The property projects have suffered
lawsuits, the mayoral campaigns failed
and the grocery stores closed. A tough
business, I suggest of the latter. “The
toughest of business!” But Pierce is
undeterred, and with Henry, recently
bought a local African-American talk-
radio station.In 2016, one of Pierce’s homes, in
Baton Rouge, was ruined by flooding.
Climate change and rising seas bode ill
for the region. Does Pierce ever imagine
that his hometown may be unliveable?
“It’s the greatest port in the States.
New Orleans is always going to be there.
Because if it wasn’t for New Orleans, the
United States literally would have never
grown.”
Pierce is unmarried, has no children
and in the past has spoken about how
his work has disrupted his private life.
What sacrifices has he made? “The older
I get, I realise that I use that as an
excuse,” he replies, with disarming
frankness. “You don’t have to choose
between your personal life and career. I
have to look at my — my dysfunction
when it comes to my personal life... ”
He says that a richer personal life
would help his acting. “If you really look
at going to another level of the human
experience, you have to explore those
relationships.”
Then he diverts again on to his
favoured theme, how African-Ameri-
cans shaped the US. “I can literally, when
you come to New Orleans, Henry, take
you and we can stand as we’re sitting
here now, on the birthplace of jazz:
Congo Square, where captured Africans
found their freedom, culturally, before
they found their physical freedom...Henry, play a solo, be free, be an individ-
ual within the constraints of the song.”
The travelling salesmen have evapo-
rated from America’s roads. YetDeath of
a Salesman ndures because of itse
themes: the proud man with the wrong
dreams, the old-timer being surpassed
by new technology (a voice recorder),
the husband who cannot recognise his
wife’s devotion, the father who cannot
hear his sons’ needs, the materialist who
yearns for contact with nature by plant-
ing a few hopeless seeds in his back gar-
den. “I am not a dime a dozen,” protests
Willy Loman, even as the market values
him less than that. His wife Linda
describes him as “only a little boat look-
ing for a harbour”.
Does Pierce like Loman? “I love Willy,
I just wish that he could see his hubris
and the mistakes that lead him down
the path of self-destruction.”This month, as well as the play, Pierce
can be seen in the final series ofSuits, a
new series ofTom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and
two films,Clemency nda Burning Cane,
both showing at the London Film Festi-
val. Unlike his formerSuits o-star Meg-c
han Markle, he has no intention of giv-
ing up acting (“I’m sure she misses it”).
But when I put it to Pierce that his trajec-
tory bears no resemblance to Loman’s
decline, he objects.
“Fame is obscurity in waiting... I
never felt and I still don’t feel that I’m set
financially. That is the scariest thing
about playing Willy Loman. I can play a
character in theatre, TV and film, and
after it’s over, it’s over.
“With Willy Loman, it’s a little differ-
ent. Looking at your inadequacies, won-
dering if your best days are behind you,
trying to live a purposeful life... Like I
said, I have 20 summers left. I have
more days behind me than ahead of
me.” Pierce is aware of the differences
between the West End and Broadway.
He once performed in a Broadway ver-
sion ofCaryl Churchill’sSerious Money,
which had been a success in London but
which majored on swearing.
“The C-word in America is like the
third rail in the subway. Here it’s differ-
ent. Look, I can’t even say it,” he laughs
at his coyness. (He eventually forces
himself to say it.) Overall, London
actors and audiences are, he says,
“slightly more appreciative of the text”.
Pierce is happy to go off-script. “I am
dangerous on Twitter! I always think I
am talking to myself. And then I realise
— Oh. My. God.” He is also fiercely politi-
cal, fiercely Democratic. In 2016, he
backed Hillary Clinton, and was
charged with battery in Atlanta after an
argument with a Bernie Sanders sup-
porter turned violent. (He underwent
counselling and community service.)
This time round he is leaning towards
Kamala Harris, the senator from Cali-
fornia. But his message is broader. “Lis-
ten, I hate Donald Trump [but] we have
to be careful not to think it’s Trump
only. He has moved millions of people
who share his beliefs. That is more con-
cerning to me,” he says. “Just getting rid
of him is tantamount to [saying we had
become] post-racial with Obama.”
Our time is nearly up, although Pierce
sits unhurried in the armchair. I tell him
that there is one particular line inDeath
of a Salesman hat I can’t reconcile witht
the African-American experience —
namely, when Loman is nostalgic for
“the great times”.
Pierce bursts into mock protest. “Spo-
ken like a young man! You haven’t hit
that wall. And it’s gonna crash down on
you one day!” He once again returns to
the past. “Think about the men and
women who died in the muddy Missis-
sippi, alone, at the end of a lynchman’s
rope, because they said, ‘I’m fighting for
generations who one day will vote.’
“Look at some of the photographs.
There’s one famous one. Just google
photographs of lynchings. You see a
man, bloodied and cut and stripped and
bare. With thousands of white people
around him. It’s moments before his
death and they take a photo. That’s the
thing that really gets me — we’re gonna
murder this man for no reason, and
we’re gonna document it. People are
cheering and laughing.”
By now we are standing — barely a
foot apart, and Pierce is pointing into
my eyes with two fingers from his right
hand. “And you see this black man, full
of dignity, looking into that lens, saying,
‘Remember me. You remember me.’
And let that define who you are today,
and how you act. That’s a courage and a
love and a dignity and a beauty. I think
of that man.
“You find that and put it in that FT
article. That man staring into the future,
knowing his life is ending, and saying,
‘You remember me.’ Act accordingly,
young man, act accordingly.”
He is channelling a force that could fill
the West End into my ears alone. By the
time he has finished, I can almost see the
lynched man before me. I don’t quite
know how to respond. We simply shake
hands, then Pierce strides off into the
photographers’ studio.
“Henry, think of our morning,” he
calls back, brightly. “We’ve had serious
discussions. But it was joyous too, yes?
The two can co-exist.”Henry Mance is the FT’s chief
eatures writerf‘Death of a Salesman’, Piccadilly Theatre,
London, October 24 to January 4‘Fame is
obscurity
in waiting’
Interview Actor Wendell Pierce has been wowing|
London in ‘Death of a Salesman’. He talks to
Henry Mance bout art, politics and prejudicea
‘You don’t have to choose
between your personal life
and career. I have to lookat my dysfunction when it
comes to my personal life’From top: Wendell Pierce,
photographed for the
FT by Lola & Pani;
Pierce as Reverend
Tillman in ‘Burning Cane’;
as Hosea Williams in
the 2014 film ‘Selma’;
as Antoine Batiste in
TV series ‘Treme’;
as Willy Loman in
‘Death of a Salesman’
at the Young Vic
— Lola & Pani; Phillip Youmans; AlamySpectrum
OCTOBER 19 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 18/10/2019- 13:56 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WIN18, Part,Page,Edition:WIN, 18, 1