Jeffrey Wright Says a Replacement Actor Dubbed His Lines When He Refused to Censor the N-Word – PEOPLE

Jeffrey Wright is recalling a time when he refused to censor an explicit word in a line reading for Ride with the Devil.

In the 1999 western drama, Wright, 58, played Daniel Holt, a freed Black man fighting in an informal Confederate militant unit during the Civil War, alongside a cast that included Tobey Maguire, Jewel and Skeet Ulrich.

While promoting his new movie American Fiction, Wright shared during an appearance on Entertainment Weekly's Around the Table series with costars Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown and Erika Alexander that he was asked to censor the N-word in a pivotal scene while re-recording dialogue for a version of the film intended to play on airplanes.

"In this scene in which he has kind of the apex of his awakening, 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-----,' " Wright recalled. "It's such a self empowering, empowering statement and understanding of the word."

When Wright said he completed "the airplane version of dialogue," he was asked to substitute the N-word in that scene and instead walked away from the dialogue recording session entirely.

"There were a few curse words, and they [said] the [N-word] here, we'd like to change that to Negro or whatever the choice was," he recalled. "And I said, 'Nah, nah that's not happening,' and I headed out the door to my car."

The actor then added, "They found some other [actor] to come in and do that one word, apparently, so that the airplane folk would be comfy and in the darkness of their own ignorance of the language of race."

Everett

Both Ross, 51, and Brown, 47, appeared visibly surprised by Wright's story. Ross placed her hand on Wright's shoulder and said, "No they did not!" Brown, meanwhile, could be heard reacting with, "Wow" and "Are you serious?"

Ride with the Devil, which came roughly a decade after Wright first broke into Hollywood, did not make a significant impression on audiences. It only ever grossed $635,096 in its limited theatrical release, per Box Office Mojo.

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Wright shared the story as he and his costars spoke to the themes of America's relationship with race at play in American Fiction. He said the anecdote relates to "understanding the meaning or meanings of the N-word," as it is used in the new movie.

Bryan Bedder/Variety via Getty

In American Fiction, Wright plays author Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, described in an official synopsis as "a frustrated novelist whos fed up with the establishment profiting from 'Black' entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes."

"To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish 'Black' book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain," the synopsis adds, stating that the film "confronts our cultures obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes."

American Fiction is in theaters now.

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Jeffrey Wright Says a Replacement Actor Dubbed His Lines When He Refused to Censor the N-Word - PEOPLE