Jeffrey Wright recalls the time David Bowie asked him if he wanted to hear some unreleased tracks: 'Sure, put your record on'

Like many of us, David Bowie was one of them American fiction Actor Jeffrey Wright's all-time heroes. But unlike most of us, Wright not only met the late rock legend, but also had the chance to act with him in the 1996 biopic Basquiat, in which he played Neo-Expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat alongside Bowie as pop art star Andy. Warhol.

On The Kelly Clarkson Show On Friday (Jan. 19), Wright recalled meeting Bowie on the film in response to a photo Clarkson put up on the big screen from a photo shoot the actor did with the “Space Oddity” singer to promote the biopic about the talented street artist. -turned-international-phenomenon.

“He meant the world to me,” Wright said of Bowie, who died of liver cancer in 2016 at age 69. “There were times in my life where his music was the soundtrack.” Wright describes his intense preparation for the film – directed by artist Julian Schnabel – in which the actor spent six months painting in Schnabel's studio in front of dozens of original Basquiat paintings to get into character.

One day, while working on a canvas, Wright said the door opened and Bowie—who also dabbled in painting, as well as a fair amount of big-screen acting—came in unexpectedly. “He's kneeling down next to me and he's like, 'do you mind if I watch?'” Wright said, Bowie asked. “And I said, 'well, I guess I'll have to get used to it, yeah.'

Wright recalled that they laughed, and for the rest of the set Bowie was “so generous and so smart and funny … and he couldn't have been cooler with me.” In fact, one day he was in the hair and makeup trailer with Gary Oldman – who was playing a fictional composite character modeled after Schnabel – and Bowie came in with an incredible question. “Do you want to hear some music?” the singer asked them.

“And we're like, 'Huh?!'” Wright recalled in shock. “And we're like, 'yeah, David Bowie, we'll tolerate your music, yeah sure! Put in your little disc.” What Bowie scored were tracks from his then-unreleased new album, the arty concept song cycle Outsidewhich included some songs that ended up in the film.

“And we hear it and we're like, 'Wow! and David is sitting there and guitar playing his own music… and he was like, you know, the cool guy at school who found an obscure record somewhere and brought it in,” Wright recalls musing. “Except the cool guy was David Bowie!”

American fiction — about a struggling black novelist horrified by the blockbuster success of a racist book he wrote as a joke — is in theaters now.

Watch Wright talk about Bowie below.