Exclusive: William Jackson Harper On His Emmy Nomination For ‘The Good Place’

Among the Emmy nominees this year for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in William Jackson Harper for his role as Chidi Anagonye in The Good Place. Co-starring with Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, the series just completed its run after four seasons. Harper has already started pivot towards films more as he was seen in 2019’s Midsommar and Dark Waters.

He also just signed on to narrate the next Marvel story on premium reading and audio entertainment platform Serial Box featuring Black Panther. Marvel’s Black Panther: Sins of the King will launch in January 2021 and will be available exclusively on the Serial Box apps available on Google Play, Apple’s App Store, and through the Serial Box website.

BlackFilmandTV.com recently caught up with Harper as he talked about his Emmy nomination.

How did you hear about the nomination?

William Jackson Harper: I was home getting my workout in when my publicist hit me up and told me I was nominated. I then told my girlfriend and my mom. It was a big moment for all of us.

How did it feel to be nominated for a project that you have worked on for a long time?

William Jackson Harper: When you do a series, your hope is that people are interested in it and that they enjoy it. That's really been the biggest joy and I’m very grateful.

How much of a joy was it playing the character you got nominated for?

William Jackson Harper: It was it was a lot of fun. There's a lot of character traits that Chidi and I share. We’re both really anxious. We both want to be good people. Even if we fail. He’s an intellectual in a way that I am not, decidedly. He's a talker, and whenever I'm feeling particularly anxious and uneasy, I get very quiet and retreat. It's great to have a character that expresses some of the things that I feel that I don't express in my everyday life, which I think is a taste for a lot of characters in that play. It depends on what year, what month, what day you get me. I feel like a lot of characters I play are characters that I can identify with on some level. Playing cheating for these last four years has been a joy. 

To work with this entire cast and to get to work with Ted, Kristen, these two titans of the acting world, was nuts because they were just so generous as scene partners With the four babies, as D'Arcy Carden likes to call it, we were all in this thing together. We're all in this brand new experience together. We formed a bond that is incredibly deep and and unique. It's just been fun to go on this ride with people that are experienced in this, To have people that you can go to, to sort of guide you a little bit and then also have people that you can just commiserate with and navigate the world as it changed around you a little bit more was great. It’s just the perfect mix of people for this show.

For those who haven't seen the show, how would you best describe your character Chidi?

William Jackson Harper: He's a professor of ethics and moral philosophy who finds himself in the afterlife and paired with a woman who isn't supposed to be there. It's discovered that she got into The Good Place by accident and it charts the journey of all four of these humans and this afterlife information system and this demon posing as an angel. It charts their journey and reshaping the afterlife and also  their own personal growth in trying to become better beings in general. He's the moral compass of the show. Having been a professor of ethics and moral philosophy, a lot of his opinions are rooted firmly in old philosophical works.

Do you think the show could have kept going?

William Jackson Harper: I think that there's ways in which we could have kept going, but it speaks to the integrity of the writers and producers and creators of the show that there is a story to tell, and we got to the end of it. Rather than just sort of tread water, and just stop watching, we decided to end it. Just because we're having fun, and we're making decent living, that's not really the point. I think that the point was to make something that feels like it's a piece of art. 

It’s inspire people to ask certain questions. We ended at the natural ending point. How many things could we really mind going forward? And how many ideas could we really start to discuss in a way that keeps upsetting the applecart in the way that we do at the end of every season of the show. I don't see where we could do that. I think this was the right choice. 

We had a historic number of Blacks nominated this year including a lot in the comedic section. Was that something that you paid attention to?

William Jackson Harper: Sometimes it feels as if certain shows, if they feature predominantly black talent get left over. It always bugged me. I watched Insecure and I think that is one of the tightest ensembles on TV and has been for years now. All the acting is very good and the scripts are amazing. it's a really a very rich journey that everyone is on and the relationships grow and change in ways that I so deeply understand. And there's a lot of nuance, and it's one of those shows that I feel hasn't gotten its due when it comes to that sort of recognition. But also, that sort of recognition isn't always the point. What you want to do is make something that's effective.  While I'm so happy to see so many black artists be recognized this year, again, awards aren't the point. But that being said, I do think that we were making a step in the right direction. I think people are looking at shows with people that don't look like them and finding themselves in those characters. That's the important thing. That's something that black people have done, like, literally forever. It doesn't really matter what race someone is, we can like put ourselves in the shoes of that character. 

That sort of thing isn't reciprocated for a lot of black artists often and I feel like that is something that is changing right now. We have a ways to go. There’s a lot of black artists that got nominated this year, but there is still a dearth of other people of color being represented in these categories too. I would like to see the fabric of America represented in terms of recognition and these things going forward a lot more. 

What’s next for you?

William Jackson Harper: The last thing I worked on was the Underground Railroad for Amazon, that Barry Jenkins adapted. It was one of those things that got hit by the the pandemic and there's a little pause in the shooting for the time being. It was supposed to come out at some point this year but it got pushed a little bit further out. But right now I'm just trying to stay creative, and trying to learn piano.