Wendell Pierce stars in Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

Teresa Castracane

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Teresa Castracane

Wendell Pierce says there’s a joke actors have about the five stages of their careers:

“There’s ‘Who is Wendell Pierce?’ ‘Get me Wendell Pierce.’ ‘Get me someone like Wendell Pierce.’ ‘Get me a younger Wendell Pierce.’ And then the last and final and fifth stage is: ‘Who is Wendell Pierce?'” he says.

After starring roles on The Wire and Treme, and a 2023 Tony Award nomination as the first Black actor to play Willy Loman in the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, Pierce is working as hard as ever. He says he’s motivated by the “ticking clock of mortality” — but also by the desire to challenge himself as an actor.

Though many entertainers shy away from the label “journeyman actor,” Pierce proudly embraces the term: “It’s not just to go from job to job, but [to] be intentional about the jobs I take,” he says. “I try to do the trifecta, as I call it — television and film and theater — every year.”

Pierce currently plays a captain on CBS’ Elsbeth and a CIA officer in the film Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War. He’s also starring in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Othello in Washington, D.C.

Pierce likens tackling Shakespeare to detective work. First, he says, there’s the “mining the text for all of its understanding and everything that Shakespeare is telling you not only about the characters, but how to portray them and what’s happening.”

More than that, though, there’s also the emotional aspect of connecting with the character — and the physical and vocal strength required of a three-hour production. “The challenge is physical, it’s intellectual, and it’s emotional, and that’s the great thing about doing Shakespeare, and even specifically doing Othello,” Pierce says. “I always think of these … iconic roles and large roles like the beginning of a hike up Mount Everest.”

Interview highlights

On how many years ago, jazz helped him crack the code on Shakespeare 

I went to the club to hear Arthur Blythe, a great alto saxophonist. And he’s pretty avant-garde, but he had this really hip, swinging tune. I was humming along with it. And then he went into his solo, which was free and wild and all over the place. And I was just looking around the club, still humming the song in my head. And when he finished his solo, we were right exactly on the same note in the melody of the song.

Millions of honeybees escaped into a rural Texas neighborhood after a semitrailer carrying about 400 hives tipped over, officials said.

Emergency officials in Orange County, Texas, shut down roads in the area Sunday morning and warned residents to stay in their homes while crews worked to unload the trailer and salvage as many hives as possible. The county is located east of Houston and borders Louisiana.

“Please remain indoors,” Orange County Emergency Services wrote on social media. “An 18 wheeler carrying beehives has turned over and there is a heavy presence of bees in the area.”

No bee stings or serious injuries were immediately reported. Officials haven’t identified the owner of the hives.

Christie Ray, who owns nearby Queen Bee Supply, said volunteers from three or four other beekeeping businesses in the area went to the crash scene Sunday to help.

“They just help each other, that’s what they do,” Ray said. “The beekeeping community is a great community.”

The company posted a video and multiple images from the scene, showing beekeepers working together to salvage the hives.

A photojournalist from CBS affiliate KDFM also captured video despite being stung , the station reported.

Chris Moore, owner of Moore Honey, along with his son and several employees, joined the effort to help the bees, but he estimated that only about a quarter of the 408 hives will survive. It mostly depends on how many queens remain alive after the crash, he said.

The potential impact on a beekeeping business following a loss like this depends on the size of the apiary. Moore pointed out that the keeper is losing not only the hives but also the revenue they could be generating.

“It’s a big loss,” Moore said. “Any time you lose that many in one shot, it’s a big loss.”

It’s common for large beekeeping operations to move hives around the country to provide commercial pollination for agriculture in places like California and to follow blooming seasons throughout the South and the Midwest for honey production.

The hives that crashed Sunday had only traveled a few miles on a trip to North Dakota when the truck driver took a wrong turn and ended up in a neighborhood with narrow roads, Moore said. The driver was trying to navigate a tight corner when the trailer fell over.

Other local keepers have put out catch boxes to collect remaining strays, but it will likely take a while for the insects to clear out of the area, Moore said.

“We appreciate everyone’s patience and cooperation as crews work to safely resolve this incident,” Orange County Emergency Services wrote on social media. 

In April, a crash involving a truck full of bees slowed interstate traffic near Knoxville, Tennessee.

Last year, about 14 million bees escaped after a tractor-trailer carrying more than 70,000 pounds of pollinator hives rolled over in northern Washington state.

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday to pass a sweeping housing affordability bill aimed at lowering costs, putting Congress on the brink of a rare bipartisan victory in President Donald Trump’s second term.

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The vote was 85-5. Several senators missed the vote due to severe thunderstorms in the Washington area that led to a ground stop at Ronald Reagan National Airport.

The legislation, which would make it easier to build homes and slap limits on Wall Street investors’ buying up houses, now goes to the House, which hopes to vote on it in the next few days. Then, it would go to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act would be a desperately needed win for Republicans, who have seen their 2026 midterm election prospects deteriorate throughout the year as voters believe Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress haven’t done enough to tackle the cost of living.

A mid-June poll by The Associated Press found that Trump’s overall approval rating is 37%, dragged down by the fact that just 33% said they approve of his handling of the economy. Other surveys have shown him getting low marks on handling the cost of living, the main issue that powered him to victory in 2024. And a June NBC News poll showed nearly 80% of U.S. voters believe the “American Dream” is harder to achieve than it was a generation ago.

The bill represents a tangible victory on a top affordability concern. The “four corners” deal reached last week among key committee chairs, which was blessed by party leaders, brought together an eclectic mix of lawmakers from all over the ideological spectrum. It was negotiated by Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Reps. French Hill, R-Ark., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

The legislation would approve a series of funding and grant programs for constructing new homes. It would slash red tape and empower local governments to expedite reviews to build more housing. And a key section titled “Homes Are For People, Not Corporations” would restrict any “large institutional investor” from buying single-family homes.

The bill was stranded for months on Capitol Hill after the Senate passed a version in March and the House approved a different version in May. The final package came together after the Senate agreed to add a series of provisions sought by the House while dropping a provision the House objected to, which would have required large investors that construct or own at least 350 single-family homes to sell them after seven years.

There’s something in the bill for just about everyone to like.

Republicans have focused on the provisions to reduce mandatory regulations, with Hill calling the bill a “meaningful step toward increasing housing supply, improving affordability, and helping more Americans achieve homeownership.”

Democrats like Warren have celebrated the restraints on institutional investors, saying the bill is about “stopping private equity from buying up homes” and raising costs for consumers.

Trump had championed provisions to “ban large Wall Street investment firms” from “buying up in the thousands single-family homes,” as he put it in this year’s State of the Union speech.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the Trump administration is “proud to have worked alongside our partners in Congress to move this legislation forward that advances the President’s housing affordability agenda.”

To the frustration of some Republicans, the achievement has been overshadowed by Trump’s actions on other issues.

His on-again, off-again Iran deal has dominated headlines this week and sparked unusual backlash from within his own party. Capitol Hill is consumed by his recent moves that led to the expiration of the FISA Section 702 warrantless surveillance program and his demand to stall his own nominee for intelligence chief, Jay Clayton, a key piece of the puzzle to revive the FISA law. There’s also considerable attention on a domestic drama about Trump’s costly — and so far failed — renovation plan to turn the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue.

Apart from his State of the Union comment on the investor provision, Trump had not been personally engaged in developing the bill, Republican lawmakers say, which caused the process to drag on for months before the negotiators resolved the disputes.

“I don’t think it would be a news flash to observe that the president hasn’t really been very hands-on in getting this bill across the finish line,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said one day before a deal was reached. “I had a whole meeting with him about it — a couple, three weeks ago. And he would like to see something passed, but to my knowledge, he hasn’t been on the telephone.”

“You’ll never get a bill — you gentlemen know this better than I do — that everybody loves and gives everybody an orgasm,” he told reporters. “You just gotta do the best you can.”