![]() ![]() Wright likewise narrated a tribute video by WarnerMedia to health-care workers during the pandemic, and a documentary on voter suppression. In addition to narrating While the Rest of Us Die, Wright voiced the first digital ad of Joe Biden's presidential campaign (to emphasize the category that puts him in, Elliott also voiced a 2020 Biden campaign ad). The payoff has been the kind of proliferation that turns the occasional voice actor into a bona fide Narrator Voice. You're playing music together and you each have an instrument and you try to harmonize and build tension and release." Perhaps his great voice is owed most of all to being a great listener addressing the accent he used for Peoples Hernandez in 2000's Shaft, Wright said he was inspired by "one particular Dominican friend whose use of language I always really dug, as well as the music of his voice." More recently, speaking to Backstage about acting in Westworld, he said: "Whether they're narrative notes or emotional notes or thoughts … it's kind of all symphonic. Unsurprisingly, he speaks about acting in musical terms, too: "As an actor, I've always had an ear for language and so the language of the blues always spoke to me," he told Black Film while working on 2008's Cadillac Records, in which he performed (and did his own singing) as Muddy Waters. ![]() His voice also has a certain musicality, perhaps inspired by his grandparents from North Carolina and Virginia. He possesses the deliberate enunciation of a stage actor, a way of speaking that makes you lean in to listen. To be fair, Wright has also put in the work to cultivate this. Even his casting as Bernard in Westworld seems to be an acknowledgement of the authorial and commanding associations made with his voice. But in recent years, his deep voice has been the dependable guide in documentaries like 2014's Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink for the Smithsonian Channel, and the trustworthy salesman pitching Dell Technologies in commercials. Though admittedly, to a certain set of people who know the actor only as Belize from HBO's Angels in America, that might come as a surprise: Belize's outsize personality in the play would imply an actor too, perhaps, expressive to be a great narrator. And it doesn't hurt to voice God, if you get the chance - the greatest disembodied, authoritative voice of them all. You must narrate ads for political candidates, and documentaries about serious subjects. People must hear your voice and instantly recognize you as that guy who does all the voice-overs. To become recognizably a Narrator, you must be, first and foremost, prolific. But no matter: You don't become one of the great Narrator Voices of the English language with a lone memorable job anyway. ![]() Vice TV's new six-part docuseries, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, is Wright's latest narration project, though it is neither his breakout nor his seminal work. Rather, it's the man who just might usurp them both as the next great American Narrator Voice: Jeffrey Wright. It's not Sam Elliott or Morgan Freeman, although the deep, gravely rumble might call them to mind. ![]()
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