“Who better to know how the American dream turns into the American nightmare than an African American family?,” asks Wendell Pierce. The actor earned a Tony nomination, his first as a performer, for delving into that nightmare as Willy Loman in the recent revival of “Death of a Salesman.” The production marks the first time in Broadway history where the Loman family is played by Black actors, which allowed Pierce to bring himself into the role. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
When Pierce was offered the role for the Young Vic production in London, he admits that despite Willy being one of the most coveted parts in the American theater canon, the character was not one he thought he would play. “I leapt at the chance because opportunities like that never come along quite as often as you would hope,” admits the actor, “and especially at this point in my career, it was the perfect marriage of where I was and the challenge of the role.”
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Pierce believes that Arthur Miller’s script speaks to universal experiences and delves into “the humanity of our psyche.” But casting Black performers as the Lomans prompts a deeper examination of the text. “The more specific you are with your choices, with your investigation, the more universal things become,” explains Pierce. “So from the African American perspective, and that’s what we brought to the play, everything was heightened. Because who would know more about the amorphic, ever-changing, disappointing pursuit of the American dream than a African-American family in the early 20th century?”
Pierce’s Willy pursues his ambitious American dream despite knowing that it is full of false hope. He refuses to face how the odds are stacked against a Black man in business at this point in American history, and this extreme denial heightens his eventual destruction and the ensuing trauma to his family. “I think about all of those families. I think about my own personal family, of those dreams and visions and opportunities lost,” reminisce the actor, calling upon his own personal experiences in the United States. “I think of all the lost lives, the lost opportunities, the lost humanity, when I think of the lost idealism that Willy Lowman goes through.”
Past great actors have telegraphed Willy’s downward spiral as a delicate march, but Pierce imbued the man’s descent as something much more tumultuous. “It’s normally played as this slow dirge to death,” he explains, “and the first impulse that I had was to fight the dying of the lights. There was a visceral fight to maintain a sort of dignity and respect and integrity in light of all the obstacles placed in front of him.” There were indeed a handful of Black business owners during this time period which would have provided a small glimmer of hope for Americans like Willy to hang on too. Even if he wasn’t set up for success like they were. “In spite of everything, there were black businessmen and women who were out there doing well. There were people who found a way out,” he elaborates. “And so that was the thing that drove him.”
As part of his visceral interpretation of trauma, Pierce would weave in several facial and body tics to his performance as Willy’s mind unraveled. “I wanted to explore the psychic breaks that happened in the man,” says Pierce, “I thought of the synaptic nerve.” He reveals that this biological concept was one taught to him at a young age by his late-brother, who was a biologist and dentist. Every motion of the human body is controlled by the “speed of the electronic impulse of the synaptic nerves skipping from space to space.” In Pierce’s portrayal, Willie’s emotional trauma is so severe that it begins to affect his physical being. “That’s what I thought of when I thought of the tics,” he explains, “that the synaptic nerve was firing off when he had his memories, but it wasn’t firing correctly, there was something that shook him. And the tics came and they was a physical manifestation of his psychic breakdown.”
Pierce is no stranger to the Tony Awards. He was nominated for Best Play as a producer of “Radio Golf,” and subsequently won that category as a producer of “Clybourne Park.” But “Death of a Salesman” marks the first time this awards body has recognized him as an actor. It’s the cherry on top of a satisfying experience which places him in the same pantheon of acting legends who have tackled this challenging role on Broadway: Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Knowing that he will be named and studied alongside those actors in future examinations of this play makes for a humbling experience. “That’s the history that I’m really making,” says Pierce, “to know that my name is in that small fraternity of men, that is the honor of a lifetime for an actor. And to come to this point in my career, to make that mark at this time in my life, is a sense of profound fulfillment and satisfaction.”
PREDICT the 2023 Tony Awards through June 11
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