This month, Westworld star Jeffrey Wright worked on three projects celebrating the life and legacy of orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whom he describes as "an underappreciated and wonderful American."
"Lincoln's Dilemma" on Apple TV+ features Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
Wright narrated the docuseries Lincoln's Dilemma for Apple TV+, and he also recorded an audio version of Frederick Douglass' first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Both are currently available.
In addition, the American history aficionado collaborated with HBO and HBO Max on the documentary Frederick Douglass in Five Speeches, which will be released on February 23.
"I believe Douglass is an underappreciated and outstanding American who made significant contributions to Lincoln's presidency." And he pushed [Lincoln] to be the president that we know and celebrate him for now,” Wright said. “If you go back and look at Lincoln, probably the freshest lens to view him through is that of Frederick Douglass. And there is no one alive today who even begins to be as critical of Lincoln as Frederick Douglass was, particularly early in his presidency.”
"He was critical of Lincoln at first, but towards the conclusion of his administration, we saw via Douglass that Lincoln was flawed," Wright continued. Lincoln was not always as progressive as many wanted him to be, or as progressive as we may want him to be now."
Douglass aided Lincoln in understanding how slavery affected all men, not just those in the African-American society. As a result, he assisted a man who, after being liberated, urged that Black people leave the United States to expand his mind to see the wider picture.
"Douglass portrays a respectable man who maintained his vows to African-Americans and the U.s. as a whole. Slavery, as Douglass and Lincoln perceive it, was not only an affliction on Black people in this country, it was an affliction on all people,” Wright shared.
"It was an illness that infected every American at the very core of our country," he said, "and that's where Lincoln is at the conclusion of his administration." "And we see that he has gone about plucking this rock out of the body of America, the rock that was slavery, not only in his words when he describes the brutality of slavery in his second inaugural address, but in his actions — we see that he has gone about plucking this rock out of the body of America." He was, as Douglass put it, "a white man of his day, burdened by racial biases of his period, but in the end, his legacy is a progressive one for all Americans." Rubin, David
