‘Black Panther’ Star Letitia Wright Might Be the Next Leonardo DiCaprio
By Erika Jarvis | Vanity Fair
Letitia Wright, star of AMC’s Humans — which returns for a second season Monday — is one of the most promising actresses of her generation, at least if you believe Michael Caton Jones. And you should: he’s the director who discovered Leonardo Dicaprio — then a child starring in commercials for fat-free Kraft singles — and cast him in his first serious film, This Boy’s Life. Dicaprio even thanked Caton Jones in his 2016 Oscars acceptance speech.
So when Caton Jones needed someone to play another downtrodden adolescent in a new film called Urban Hymn, he turned to Wright. The role of group-home dwelling Jamie, he said in an interview, was originally written for a white actress. But Wright was the only one he found who could play the role with both distress and ferocity. By the time the shoot was finished, Caton Jones was calling his leading lady “the most exciting young screen acting talent that I’ve had the pleasure of working with since Leonardo DiCaprio,” adding, for good measure: “Letitia is just gob-smackingly brilliant.”
Brilliant as she may be, in the United States, Wright is still an unknown — the sort of actress who can meet a reporter at an East Village coffee shop during peak brunch hour without raising any eyebrows.
Read more from Vanity Fair.
