A rare in-depth, lengthy (45 minutes) videotaped chat with Jeffrey Wright, courtesy of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s ongoing “Conversations with…” series of discussions with the industry’s best and brightest actors, which I enjoy and have shared several installments from. Wright’s is certainly right up there with the most intriguing.

Moderated by Bruce Fretts, the central focus of the conversation is on HBO’s “Westworld” which Wright co-starred in playing a character named Bernard Lowe, the brilliant and quixotic head of the park’s programming division, who possesses a keen observation of human nature that inspires his work, which is, creating artificial people. There’s much more to him than meets the eye, than a one-sentence summary can provide, but for the sake of those who haven’t seen the beautifully done, at times confounding series, I won’t spoil it.

As with others in the series, Wright’s is a performance that deserved/deserves recognition (we’ll find out about Emmys soon enough); as my colleague Tanya Steele succinctly put it in her “7 Standout TV Performances by Black Actors That Deserve More Attention” piece, in which Wright as Bernard Lowe is #1 (read it in full here), “The layers that this man delivers in one moment is mind boggling. He gives a very precise and unwavering performance. He doesn’t play a character, he inhabits the character and delivers the backstory of the person in a glance. Who the hell does that?! I appreciated the discipline he brought to the character of Bernard Lowe in ‘Westworld.’ The deceptive humanity of Bernard. The uncompromising body language and speech pattern. It is a joy to watch him work.”

Created by Jonathan Nolan (Christopher Nolan’s brother, who also co-wrote a number of Christopher’s films, as well as the CBS hit series “Person of Interest”), and executive produced by J.J. Abrams (who seemingly has his hands in so much these days), HBO’s “Westworld” is a recommended trip worth taking, featuring a cast that also includes Thandie Newton, Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, Rodrigo Santoro, Shannon Woodward, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Angela Sarafyan, Simon Quarterman and more.

Watch/listen to Jeffrey Wright in conversation with SAG-AFTRA below and let him convince you…