WiNsTON dUkE

On Peele, success and Avengers: Endgame…

Jordan Peele is the man of the moment. How was he to work with?

Oh God, I could wax poetically for hours. He listens very closely. We met and discussed the character in depth and spitballed ideas while he was still writing. We played around with a lot of different things and it allowed me to feel that I had a strong part to play in the creative process and wasn’t just learning my lines. He was open to a lot of improvisation. It lends itself to his sketch-comedy days. We would work beats.

Your career has taken off in the last couple of years. How are you coping?

It does make my head spin. It feels like things are moving fast, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I constantly check in with myself and my support system, and I always remember that when I wasn’t working, before there was a lot of attention and quote-unquote ‘fame’, what I did was I prayed. I prayed to work and be able to tell stories. Now that I’m getting a lot of work, I have to remember that I didn’t pray for attention, I prayed for work.

Can Avengers: Endgame top Infinity War?

The short and sweet answer? Yes. They can and will top it. They’re incredibly confident, as they should be, over at Marvel.

We’ll also see you this year in Peter Berg’s crime-mystery Wonderland…

It’s going to be a fun ride and you really get to interrogate a little bit of Boston, post-gentrification. These two characters [played by Duke and Mark

Wahlberg] would never be friends under normal circumstances, but the circumstances aren’t normal. They’re forced to find family in each other and deal with a local crisis. It’s an odd-couple situation. It’s a cool project from Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg and Netflix.