Wendell pierce is one of the most accomplished actors in America today. You probably know him from The Wire, suits, his role in Jack Ryan. We flew down to New Orleans to talk to him about what it takes to become a great actor, but also his love of that city and his time there in Hurricane Katrina. Wendell, it's so good to see you.

So good to see you. Welcome to New Orleans.

Thank you. Thank you for having me to your hometown. Last time we met was in L. A. I'm much happier that we're.

Meeting here. Yes, it's beautiful.

You suggested the World War.

Ii Museum. Yeah, I suggested it because my dad fought in Saipan during World War II, and it really made an impact on me. He would talk about it briefly, and then he went through some things, some challenges afterwards. It showed you how to deal with the adversity, and so it taught me a lot. And so I like to come here as it expands. It really shows the sacrifices that people made that the country made. It really shows you how to... It's a 30-year character.

It's an incredible museum. Look at this amazing.

It's a nice, cool building. -it's a great architectural design.

-it's very cool. I love this.

It gives you an idea of the plains and the warships that were there.

And the rain held off.

For us. And the rain held off for us.

I had a horrible feeling we had a big storm coming.

No, not for you, Katie.

So, Wendell, you've been in an extraordinary number of hit productions. Jack Ryan, The Wire, suits, on stage, recently in Death of a Salesman. Yes. Is there a method to the way you choose your parts?

Good at writing. I tried to do projects. I used to be a theater snob. When I first got out of conservatory- What is a theater snob? When you're getting out of Juilliard and you're like, I only do theater. The trite work that is on television.

Only Shakespeare is good enough.

Only Shakespeare and check-off. Then I realized you can go broke that way. But no, I'd started to realize the thing that the common denominator is really good writing. I was very fortunate to see that, especially on The Wire.

Is it fair to say that The Wire catapulted you to a different level.

Of - Not only fair to say - of.

Acting like fame, wealth.

Credibility, everything? Yes. Not only accurate, it is truth. It is absolutely truth. It is the thing that put me on the map.

How did you prepare for the role of bunk?

I actually met the real bunk. Oscar Riquier, who was a detective in the homicide division. He, at the time, was working the courts. He was near the end of his career, and he was taking me around, introducing me to other officers, talking about cases and talking about police work. Then I met some officers of the Western district in Baltimore, and I did ride alongs and watched interrogations or interviews. I shouldn't say interrogations. They would be on me about that. I noticed that they were students of human behavior, like actors.

The cops?

The cops themselves, yes.

Didn't you even take part in an interview? I think I'm not allowed to call an interrogation. In an.

Interview of a suspect once? It was an interview.

He said- I'm not sure how legit that is, by the way.

They would drag you and have you play a police officer. I won't ever say anything about the officer that did it. I was on a ride along. I was on a ride along, and we went to actually interview someone who had been robbed, and they went to get information on what, where, how, who, any distinguishing marks on the person or their clothing or whatever? And then they turned to me. I was just sitting there and they said, Officer pierce, do you have any questions? I was like, What did he look like? Who was he? I was like, You can't do that. He said, No, I wanted you to get the feeling.

That's roleplay. That is method acting.

That was method acting.

You said something a minute ago, which is that cops are students of human nature. Yeah.

And.

Act as are too.

Yes.

How are you studying human nature every day to bring what you observe in people into your roles? What does that mean.

For you? Well, it's not as if I'm going around watching people astutely all the time. When you study a script, no one has to tell you how to feel when you lose a parent. When you study a script and you realize that Cordelia watches her King Lear die, you have to create that world in your heart, in your mind, and in your spirit, it's so strong that it induces the behavior of acting.

So everything that you feel comes to that moment and allows for that moment of acting.

And if the moment isn't there, you haven't done enough work yet. There's moments in the play or in the film where you're in love with someone. You start with the circumstances of the story and the script, it. But then you start just looking at the other actor. She laughs funny. I love that about her. She has this beautiful way of closing her eyes and relaxing.

In that moment, do you, Wendell pierce, almost really feel you love the other actor?

Yeah, that's why it's always dangerous. I try to. I try to go there. I always find something, especially if we have a loving relationship, I will always find something. And the other woman, or I've been in situations, or the man that you find loving, that you would find attractive in them. If you're going to be a student of human behavior, you go for it, you go. And sometimes it's-It's not for you. It's for all ages because you don't want to have an affair or anything. I'm not.

Going to push you there, Wendell. Yeah, I know.

We'll- I'm in trouble already.

So this museum is special to you.

Yeah, I love this museum because it connects me to my father's youth. He was drafted into the war at 17 and not knowing anything about what he went through or all the challenges he had or the fears he must have had, this is a way for me to connect back to who he was as a young man.

Tell me the story, Wendell, of your dad and his medals.

Oh, yeah. Well, so my medal story. My father was in Saipan, and when he came back from the war, he was being discharged and his papers were behind him. And he told the discharge officer, I think we got medals. But my papers are behind me.

So he had been told that he had received a medal for his services to the country.

Yeah, he had been told that they got several medals for their battle in Saipan. And it was a white female officer who didn't believe him and said, Yeah, right, you. How could a young black soldier- Get a medal. -get a medal. And he harbored a lot of anger and resentment for that. It was years later that my mother came to me in 2010 and said, The army sent a letter saying that your father got his medals. We should really get his medals. He's in his late 80s now. I said, yeah. I said bring me the letter. And she brought me this yellowed piece of paper from 1945.

So the letter hadn't come in-.

I thought it had been a recent letter, yes. In 2010, right? And it was a letter from January 1945, and he had harbored that resentment. I said, I'll get you those medals. And with the help of our state Senator at the time and this museum, they got him his medals and not only got him his medals, they had an award ceremony for him in the first pavilion. And he pinned my brother when he graduated from West Point. And so my brother came back and we penned him. His medals then had reception and all. And a few weeks later, they honored him again at the Spirit Awards Gala. Here at the museum. And he said, I've seen a lot. I didn't get my medals and this museum helped me get my medals. It really means a lot. I never thought I would see a black President. I've lived to see a black President. And this country has gone through a lot. And I just want to say God bless America. And he saluted the audience. And I'm in tears. And I'll never forget there was a Medal of Honor.

I'm in tears and I wasn't.

Even there. There was a Medal of Honor winner sitting at the table with us, and I was like, God, I never knew my father could give a speech like that or whatever. And he turned to me and said, Where the hell do you think you got it from? I said, You're right, sir, you're right. So it's a special place.

I mean, your dad could easily have felt, you know what? I risked my life for this country that wouldn't even give me the medal I was due because of the color of my skin. And you could imagine him thinking, having resentment about America. But he didn't have that. He didn't feel...

He did, but it made him commit even more to what the values and the esthetic of America is all about. He's one of those true patriots. He loved his country when his country didn't love him back. Now, when I think of America, it's not apple pie and baseball. I think of my descendants on the values of Assumption Paris who found a way to pull their money together to buy land after one of my uncles was linched. He did not die. The family sued and actually won the money to buy the land. So we got, which to this day, Girls Sugarcane and is our family, Homestead. It's the resilience, it's the.

Brilliance of that. The land that your uncle was linched on, you then managed to buy.

You then managed to buy. In the Paris, yes. Yes.

And after all that, your dad still came to this museum?

Yeah.

And stood there and saluted this country?

I saluted this country because of what we made of the country ourselves. That's the thing. That's the thing about it. I remember one time we went to a boxing match, and during the black power movement, you didn't stand for the national anthem. We went to a boxing match and stood right in front of us with some young cats. I was a kid, and some young brothers pulled on my dad's pant leg and said, Oh, no, sit down, pops. No, don't stand for the national anthem. He goes, No, man, don't pull on my leg. He said, Man, sit down. He said, Hey, man, I fought for that flag. So I stand for it, right? He said, Man, sit down. He said, Listen, I fought for that flag so you can sit your ass down, right? You sit down, but I'm going to stand up. And if you touch my leg again, I'm going to kick your teeth in. I'll never forget that, right? He wasn't mad at them for sitting down. I was like, That's right. Protests. Do that, young bud. But I'm going to stand up because this is what I did. You fight your way, I fought my way.

We all going to get there some way. That's what he taught me, that there's a dexterity to the conceit of what America is, and don't let anyone else tell you that your pursuit of liberty is wrong.

When you played the role of Robert Zane in suits, I can't imagine for a second that you thought you were going to be playing the dad of a future princess of the Royal Family of England. How weird.

Was that? I didn't believe it. When everybody was aware that Megan was dating Prince Harry, I was like, Man, you guys are making it up. Then one day I showed up on set, we were doing a scene and she was engaged in the show and wasn't engaged yet. And we were in a car, we were about to get out of the car, and they said, No, stay in the car. Stay in the car. I said, We have a paparazzi down the block with long lens. And if they get a shot of Megan with that ring on, it's going to go around the world instantaneously. So, Megan, take the ring off. Okay, now get out. I said, Wow, you guys are going through all of that. And then when we got out of the car, there was this rock solid, secret agent, MI5 guy security that took Megan and Wister off. She said, I'll take her from here. I was like, I heard the British accent and I said, Oh, it's real. It's the real deal. They sent security over and they had security. That's when I knew they were dating.

Okay, you've taught acting, right?

Yeah, I've tried to.

I want to try to learn something. Okay. How do I say New Orleans?

It's.

The hardest city in America for a foreigner to pronounce.

If you think of the French rhythm, or Lyon.

Yeah.

We have the French rhythm without the French sound. New Orleans. So that's the way to think of it. New Orleans. I thought it- Think of all of you now.

Okay.

I knew it wasn't simple. There is the tourist trip of New Orleans. Nobody down here says New Orleans, but it looks good on a T-shirt, right? N-postrophy-a-w-l-i-n-s. New Orleans. I went to New Orleans. Nobody says that. And then there is an unwritten rule of, you say New Orleans, to rhyme in a song or a poem. Do you know what it means? To miss New Orleans and miss her each night and day. And I tell you what's more? When you miss the one you care for more than you miss New Orleans. Pops. Louis and Arpshian. Very nice. So that's the rule. That's your acting lesson for the day. Okay.

Okay. New Orleans.

New Orleans.

New Orleans.

There you go.

I have a funny feeling I'd be taken for a tourist anyway.

I.

Open my eyes downtown. New Orleans is important to you. You grew up here. You were here the night before Katrina hit. In fact, you would have been here with a hangover- Yes. -when Katrina hit. I came down- Your family had not persuaded you to leave.

I came down for a family vacation. I was meeting family here. I got to the city and there was all the hubbub at the airport. I said, What's going on? They said, The hurricane. I said, The one in Florida? They said, Yes, coming here. I'm like, Oh, no. I went out that Saturday night, and my mother was concerned we should leave. I'm like, Oh, this, we don't have to leave. It's just a hurricane. We've stayed through many. I gave the ultimatum that if they call an evacuation, if they call for a mandatory evacuation, which had never happened in the city before — and that's why I thought I could say it — if they call for a mandatory evacuation, we'll leave. The next morning they called for a mandatory evacuation. It's like my mother called my bluff, really. She said, We're leaving. I had gone out that Saturday night and brought up the Sunday morning sunrise. I was tired and hungover, and we were packing the cars. My nieces were here, and my sister-in-law, and my mom, and dad, and I'm packing the cars. And I'm like, I'll stay. You guys go. We were going out to relatives outside the city.

And I said, You go. I'm going to stay. And I went to sleep. I woke up a half an hour later, and they were still packing the cars. So I said, Okay, I'll leave with you. If you guys are still here, I'll leave. Had I not, I would have been in some of the deepest flooding of the city. My neighborhood of Punch a Train Park had 20 feet of water and sat in it for two months.

You lost friends.

We lost nine neighbors. We went to church that Sunday morning, and the Bynams, they lived around the corner from us, an elderly couple. Is what my father said, Are you guys leaving? I said, No, we're going to stay. He said, No, we're going to leave. I said, All right, well, you know, you guys take care. That was the last time we saw them. They found Ms. Bynum in a tree. So the desperation of trying to leave the water, escape the water, she had climbed into a tree, and the tree fell over into the flood. So I always think of them and how I wish they had left. And so thankful that we had. I always think that I stayed. Maybe I would have gotten around the corner to save him. But may they rest in peace.

You brought your parents back to your house eventually? Yes. And it was trasheded.

It was destroyed. I'll never forget, driving back into the city when we were able to finally get back to our neighborhood, it looked like nuclear winter. Everything was gray, everything was destroyed. We finally got to the block and turning on to the block to see our entire block destroyed. My parents broke down in tears. It was like the death in the family. Itried to... It was funny. Gallows humor, I guess. My mother told me to try the key. We're going to kick the door. Don't kick the door. Just try the key first. And I had to show her that the key wouldn't work because the house was destroyed. And she said, Okay. And I said, Kick the door in. I had a friend called me who got in before, and he said, When you come back, make sure you're here with your parents, because the first sight of it could kill them. My father was 80. My mother was in her late 70s at the end of their life in the golden years to lose everything. And my father just wept and said, This is our whole life. We raised our boys here. We raised our boys here.

So I knew my goal was to get them home before they died. So I really worked hard to rebuild the home as fast as possible to get them back. And I did to the point that they were one of the few people back in the neighborhood of 1,000 homes, maybe just a few people. And then neighbors said, Wendell, you got your parents back. The neighborhood is never going to come back, but you can bring attention to it. We have to rebuild. And then I realized that so much had been done to build that neighborhood. It was one of the first black neighborhoods post World War II in a segregated New Orleans who could not come and just buy a home anywhere. And because of the civil rights movement, this neighborhood was created. My parents, like a Moses generation, had created this sanctuary, and I knew that I had a responsibility as the part of their Joshua generation to rebuild it. I put together an effort of residence, and we rebuilt our neighborhood brick by brick, house by house, block by block until we returned. And now we are on the Register of Historic Places, on the National Register of Historic Places, Punch a Train Park.

Thank you. That was great, Wendell. Thank you very much.

Thank you.