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Richard Wesley was born on July 11, 1945, in Newark, New Jersey, as the elder of two sons to George Wesley, a laborer, and Gertrude Thomas Wesley, a housewife. After finishing high school, he enrolled at Howard University in Washington, DC, where he majored in Playwriting and Dramatic Literature. His mentors included Owen Dodson, Chair of the Drama Department, and Ted Shine, his playwriting instructor. Howard University was an exhilarating and captivating environment for Wesley. The civil rights movement was inspiring youth nationwide. Stokely Carmichael was a junior on campus, and John Kennedy was President, residing just two miles from the university. Among Wesley’s peers in the College of Fine Arts were Hattie Winston, who later starred on Broadway and the TV show Becker (1998) alongside Ted Danson; Donny Hathaway, the renowned composer and R&B artist; Jessye Norman, a celebrated opera and concert singer; and Phylicia Rashad, who arrived as a freshman during Wesley’s senior year and would go on to star in two Bill Cosby TV series and become the first Black woman to win the Tony Award for Best Actress. Wesley’s talent emerged early when, as a nineteen-year-old sophomore, he received an Honorable Mention in the Samuel French publishing company’s annual National Collegiate Playwriting Competition. After graduating, Wesley moved to New York City. Actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, whom he had met at Howard, guided him towards the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem. There, he joined the writers’ workshop led by Artistic Director Robert Macbeth and playwright-in-residence Ed Bullins, a key figure in the burgeoning Black Theatre Movement. Four years later, Bullins introduced Wesley to producer Joseph Papp, who produced Wesley’s debut play, The Black Terror, a politically charged drama that garnered critical acclaim and established Wesley as a leading voice among a new wave of playwrights in New York, including David Rabe, OyamO, Susan Yankowitz, and David Mamet. His subsequent off-Broadway play, The Last Street Play, caught the attention of actor Sidney Poitier, who invited him to develop a screenplay for a comedy he envisioned. The resulting film, Uptown Saturday Night (1974), featured Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Flip Wilson, and Paula Kelly. It was a box office success and led to a follow-up film, Let’s Do It Again (1975), starring Poitier, Cosby, John Amos, Denise Nicholas, and Ossie Davis, which also achieved major success. Throughout the following years, Wesley remained active in theater, film, and television. In the 1980s, he wrote two more feature films: Native Son (1986), an adaptation of Richard Wright’s acclaimed novel, and Fast Forward, a musical film directed by Sidney Poitier. He also wrote a children’s film for PBS titled The House of Dies Drear (1984), adapted from Virginia Hamilton’s book. On stage, he contributed to the musical The Dream Team at the Goodspeed Opera House and later wrote a new drama, The Talented Tenth, at the Manhattan Theatre Club. During the 1990s, Wesley focused mainly on television movie scripts, including Murder Without Motive (NBC), Mandela and de Klerk (1997) (Showtime), Bojangles (Showtime), and Deacons for Defense (2003) (Showtime). He also wrote episodes for the Sidney Lumet drama series 100 Centre Street (2001) on the A&E network. Continuing his professional work, Wesley currently serves as the Associate Chair of the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
