When actor Jeffrey Wright found out that he had been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, there was only one person he immediately wanted to thank – his late mother. As he revealed in an emotional interview with Extra, upon receiving the news the first thing he did was turn to a picture of her. "The first person I acknowledged was my mom. There’s a picture of her just there, so yeah… she and I had a moment," he told the publication.
But why his mom? While discussing his Oscar-nominated role in comedy-drama American Fiction, which landed a total of five nods at this year's Academy Awards including Best Picture, Wright reveals that he sees the film as an homage to her. Despite it being the story of how a frustrated novelist's satirical response to stereotypical Black books becomes a bestseller, Wright ultimately thinks that the beating heart of the movie is the mother-son relationship.
