A literary satire that’s far from by the book
WHY AMERICAN FICTION I S PROVING A CINEMATIC PAGE-TURNER
WORDS TARA OKEKE
Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) with his brother Clifford (Sterling K. Brown)
Author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae, left) plies her trade
Neighbour Coraline (Erika Alexander) and Monk take a walk on the wild side
Writer-director Cord Jefferson checks progress on set.
“I FELT LIKE it was electrically charged. Like somebody had sat down and written a book specifically for me.” Cord Jefferson is a name you might not recognise — until now his credits have been writing ones, for TV shows as varied as The Good Place, Master Of None and Watchmen (he was also a consultant on Succession). But with new film American Fiction, he’s stepping up, not only adapting Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure into screenplay form, but making his directorial debut. When he picked up the book in 2020, he was instantly hooked and felt he had no choice but to get it onto the screen. Three years on, the resulting movie is amassing buzz fast, scooping the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, garnering rave reviews, and inspiring Oscar chatter for Jefferson and its star, Jeffrey Wright, alike.