American Fiction trailer: Jeffrey Wright code-switches to become a bestseller in Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut

Last Updated on November 3, 2023

Thelonius’ Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is tapping into a different angle of the Black experience for his next novel. However, he will discover embellishing your identity is a slippery slope. In today’s American Fiction trailer, Cord Jefferson makes his directorial debut for a comedy about identity, expectations, and pulling wool over the eyes of individuals looking to get rich off other people’s struggles.

Here’s the official synopsis for American Fiction:

Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

Written for the screen and directed by Cord Jefferson, American Fiction is based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett. Jeffrey Wright leads the star-studded cast, with Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Keith David, Issa Rae, and Sterling K. Brown.

American Fiction is the winner of the People’s Choice Award at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Today’s American Fiction trailer finds Monk attending a conference about the new novel from Sinatra Golden (Issa Rae). When Golden’s book strikes a chord with Monk’s writing sensibilities, he looks hard at his career trajectory and aims to change it. Taking the literary world by surprise, Monk adopts a pen name to publish a book that relies on Black stereotypes to sell his new voice. Monk must assume the deceptive role when the book becomes a bestseller, landing himself in a whirlwind of attention for literature he’d hoped to avoid writing his entire career. Code-switching is only the beginning of Monk’s journey. Who would have thought fame would come at such a significant cost?

American Fiction opens in select theaters on December 15, with expanded screenings on December 22. What do you think about today’s American Fiction trailer? Let us know in the comments section below.