Wendell Pierce Challenged Himself to an Annual Acting Trifecta. Now He’s Starring in a ‘Jack Ryan’ Movie, ‘Elsbeth’ and ‘Othello’ All at Once - Variety

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Wendell Pierce Challenged Himself to an Annual Acting Trifecta. Now He’s Starring in a ‘Jack Ryan’ Movie, ‘Elsbeth’ and ‘Othello’ All at Once

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In 2019, Wendell Pierce was walking through London's Piccadilly Circus to make it to that night's performance of "Death of a Salesman," when he stumbled upon a massive billboard. The ad was for the latest season of "Jack Ryan," the Prime Video series in which he also stars. As he looked at himself on the Technicolor screen, it struck him that the London Film Festival was also screening his latest film, "Burning Cane," for which he'd won best actor at Tribeca.

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Headed to the theater tonight to perform in DEATH OF A SALESMAN something caught my eye on the huge electronic billboard in Piccadilly Circus, London ⁦@jackryanamazon⁩ ⁦@SalesmanWestEnd⁩ pic.twitter.com/MYRx6WxWzA — Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) October 29, 2019

In this moment, Pierce developed his personal mantra: "I want to do the trifecta every year," the Juilliard grad remembers thinking, meaning he would star in a theater production, a TV series and a film annually. "This is what I trained for."

But, this month, he raises the stakes to a quadfecta.

"I wear that with a badge of honor, and I’m humbled," Pierce says about the diversity of his IMDb. "This is a dream. This is the actor’s life that I’ve always wanted and hope to continue. That’s what I love, and hopefully people can see the range and the dexterity."

When he logged on to Zoom with Variety from Washington, D.C., Pierce had just finished telling the London story to his young co-stars during rehearsal for "Othello," a bucket list role since his school days. His advice to them: "Focus on the accumulation of events that get you to this point. Don’t think of all the things that are taken away from you, but think of the events as they accumulate; it drives the momentum of the story."

"That’s why I always proudly say 'I am a journeyman actor,'" Pierce explains. "Sometimes people say, 'Oh, Wendell, you shouldn’t say that,' and I go, 'No, a journeyman actor can be seen on the stage, on television, and in cinema." Doing all at the same time speaks to that goal as an artist.'"

Since Pierce's first appearance in Variety — a post-grad role as an ensemble player in the traveling stage production of "Duke Ellington's Queenie Pie," — on Oct. 1, 1986, he's built a resume as eclectic as the jazz that's the soundtrack to his New Orleans hometown: from Detective "Bunk" Moreland in HBO's "The Wire" and trombonist Antoine Batiste in "Treme" to that Tony and Olivier-nominated turn in "Death of a Salesman," as well as roles in popcorn films like Marvel Studios' "Thunderbolts*" and DC Studios’ "Superman" (which also debuted simultaneously last year).

Read on as Pierce looks back on his four-decade journey.

I had just gotten out of school. That was one of my first jobs, and we went on tour — first in Philadelphia, and then here in Washington, D.C., at the Kennedy Center.

We were with some of the most talented people around — Marion Caffey, Larry Marshall, Denise Morgan, Tina Fabrique, Lillias White, Terry Burrell, Ken Prymus — they were Broadway stalwarts, and then in the pit was the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Every night to hear that music, Duke Ellington’s final piece, being played by orchestra, I saw a level of excellence, proficiency and commitment that I’d never seen before, and I saw how it manifests itself in performance. It was a great lesson to learn right at the beginning of my career. It’s still one of my fondest memories.