Wendell Pierce, actor

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2019

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Wendell Pierce is an American actor best known for his role as Bunk Moreland in the television series The Wire. Since the series ended in 2008, he has made around 40 film and television appearances, including Treme, Selma and the legal drama Suits, in which he played Robert Zane, the father of Rachel Zane, played by Meghan Markle. His theatre credits range from The Cherry Orchard to Death of a Salesman. Born in 1963, the youngest of three sons, Wendell grew up in the Pontchartrain Park area of New Orleans, which was the first middle-class African-American suburban-style development in the city. He graduated from the prestigious Juilliard School in New York and his career got off to a flying start with a small part opposite Tom Hanks in a film called The Money Pit. He hasn’t been out of work since. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed Wendell’s childhood home in New Orleans and he was instrumental in rebuilding his parents’ house in Pontchartrain Park. He also built 40 new homes and staged a production of Waiting for Godot on an empty street corner in one of the most devastated districts of the city. He is currently reprising his role as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman on stage in London. DISC ONE: Jim Henson - Bein' Green (Featuring Kermit The Frog) DISC TWO: Wynton Marsalis - Green Chimneys DISC THREE: Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove (Part 1) DISC FOUR: Mahalia Jackson - Take My Hand, Precious Lord DISC FIVE: Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now DISC SIX: Solomon Burke - Don't Give Up on Me DISC SEVEN: Aaron Copland - Appalachian Spring (Doppio Movimento), performed by New York Philharmonic DISC EIGHT: John Coltrane - A Love Supreme Part I: Acknowledgement BOOK CHOICE: The Omni-americans: Black Experience And American Culture by Albert Murray. LUXURY ITEM: A multi-burner barbecue grill CASTAWAY'S CHOICE: Take My Hand, Precious Lord by Mahalia Jackson Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.8	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.4	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take
0:13.2	with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the
0:18.0	original Radio 4 broadcast and for right reasons the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:24.4	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:30.0	Music Music
0:46.4	My cast away this week is the actor Wendel Piers. His credits include roles in more than 30 films
0:52.3	and 50 TV shows. He starred as Meghan Markle's father in the legal drama Suits,
0:57.0	but it was as detective Bunk Mawland in the wire that he helped redefine the boundaries of what
1:02.0	television could be. If the wire was novelistic then the follow-up to remain written with him in
1:06.9	mind was poetic, a polyphonic tribute to the resilience and cultural riches of Piers' home
1:12.3	city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Born in 1963, Wendel and his family lived in
1:18.8	Pontchartrain Park, the first middle class African-American suburban style development in the city.
1:24.2	At the time schools were still segregated and his parent stories of the free southern theatre,
1:29.5	a civil rights theatre group, left him with a sense that even in extreme circumstances
1:34.6	art matters. It was a lesson that would play out in his own life when Katrina destroyed his
1:39.2	neighbourhood and he was inspired to act in more than one sense of the word. He says,
1:44.6	in American culture we've turned away from an awareness of the prophetic power of art,
1:49.2	of its role as a means of revealing the hidden order beneath every dayness and its power to
1:54.3	transform us and the world. Art doesn't give us life's answers as much as the power to live
1:59.9	life's questions. Wendel Piers, welcome to Desert Island Disc. Oh thank you for having me. I'm
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.