Latest in Cord Jefferson

Cord Jefferson won at the Oscars on Sunday, taking home the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction.  Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, the film straddled the line between drama and satire to depict social commentary on microaggression and pigeonholing of Black creatives…

Prior to American Fiction, Sterling K. Brown was best known as Randall Pearson in the long-running, award-winning NBC family drama series This is Us. The part that director Cord Jefferson was offering him couldn't have been more different: in Jefferson's adaptation of the satirical novel by Percival…

To Cord Jefferson, jazz has always felt like “the sound of home.” So when thinking about the score for his first feature, American Fiction, where family was very much front and center, he felt there could be no more appropriate genre of music on which to draw. “I grew up in a household where jazz was…

I share my colleague Pete Hammond's fascination with Cord Jefferson's BAFTA win for his screenplay adaptation, American Fiction. It is no small thing for a self-consciously American story to win a very British award against competition as formidable as Christopher Nolan, especially for a debut…

After nearly a decade of the BAFTA and Oscars failing to match on their choice for Best Picture (with the exception in 2020, when Covid created an atypical year to say the least), you can probably take it to the bank that this year that streak will be…

American Fiction filmmaker Cord Jefferson and writer John Wells have signed on to Just Cause, Amazon’s upcoming thriller limited series, starring and executive produced by Scarlett Johansson, Deadline has confirmed. Jefferson and Wells will co-write the first episode and executive produce the series…

“I want to do an erotic thriller and I’m also working on a neo-western that is also is like a noir,” beamed American Fiction filmmaker Cord Jefferson about his potential sophomore directorials. The director spilled the beans on his next project to Deadline while walking the DGA Awards red carpet…

On Tuesday, writer-director Cord Jefferson received his first Oscar nomination for American Fiction in Writing (Adapted Screenplay). Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, American Fiction straddles the line between drama and satire to depict social commentary on microaggression and…

Composer Laura Karpman received her first Oscar nomination on Tuesday for Amazon MGM Studios' American Fiction in Music (Original Score).  In a call with Deadline on Tuesday morning, Karpman is giddy to claim that she might have possessed a little foresight that led to this Oscar reigning moment as…

Jeffrey Wright, star of Cord Jefferson's provocative debut feature American Fiction, says he felt a personal affinity with his character Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison in the film, in part because of the challenges Monk experiences with regard to family issues. Monk is an author and a professor of English…

Deadline's Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year's most talked-about scripts continues with writer-director Cord Jefferson’s feature film debut American Fiction. Adapted from Percival Everett's 2021 novel Erasure, American Fiction emerges as a hard-hitting commentary on identity…

Hello, and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline. Today, for the final episode of 2023 (!), we're talking to director-writer Cord Jefferson and producer Jermaine Johnson about their latest project American Fiction, which won the…