Jeffrey Wright has played his share of heroes and icons—Martin Luther King, Colin Powell and controversial artist Jean-Michel Basquiat—so it must be time, acting-wise, to try a villain. “Boardwalk Empire” has given him a plum role as Dr. Valentin Narcisse, this season’s nemesis for Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi).

“He’s loosely based on an historical figure, Casper Holstein,” Wright says over the phone during a break from shooting. Holstein was a prominent numbers runner in 1920s Harlem, but was also one of the most generous philanthropists of his day.

“He had political relations at the highest levels,” Wright says. “He was also a benefactor of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and a major benefactor of the artists that made up the Harlem renaissance — a pivotal figure in Harlem’s development at that time.”

Born in St. Croix, Holstein moved to New York in 1894. Following high school graduation, he enlisted in World War I and was stationed in the US Virgin Islands. After the war, he found work as a doorman and then a messenger on Wall Street. Studying the stock market, he devised a lottery system to widen his gambling base uptown and maximize profits. Its success earned him the name “Bolita King,” with profits estimated at $2 million.

“For a black man at that time to ascend to a place of power requires that he be considerate, strategic and thoughtful because it’s not coming to him easily,” Wright says. “He has to perform in a way that lets him infiltrate the circles of power and ingratiate himself in away that serves his interests.”

Wright notes that Narcisse is Casper Holstein “disemboweled of his moral integrity.”

After arriving in Atlantic City, Narcisse clashed with Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams), using a dispute about a murdered employee to grab a percentage of the Onyx Club. He dismissed White as “a servant pretending to be a king,” before going over his head to talk with Thompson. It’s a carefully calibrated power play that bolsters Narcisse as he makes further encroachments on White’s business in the coming weeks.

Howard Korder, one of the show’s writers who met Wright when he appeared in his play, “Search and Destroy,” at Yale Rep in 1990, pulled the actor aside early on in the “Boardwalk” production.

“Narcisse feels no contradiction by his public face and private life,” Korder told him. “Because he’s smart, he can create a justification for his selfishness. At the same time, I think he’s genuine about his desire to catalyze the development of the ‘Negro’ race.”

Growing up in Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, the 47-year-old actor studied political science and contemplated a career in law before turning to the stage his junior year. “There was something about me that was fearful of it,” he recalls, “I never performed in a play in high school. I was concerned the language would never come to me, so I avoided it until my junior year of college when I took a class.”

That class was the beginning of a dynamic career that’s included playing the title role in Julian Schnabel’s biopic “Basquiat” opposite David Bowie as Andy Warhol. “David is a singular artist who gives off a lot through his work, which makes it all the simpler for me,” Wright says. “There’s also a kind of doppelgänger at work with him: one of the most famous men on the planet playing another.”

Wright lives in Brooklyn with his wife of 13 years, Carmen Ejogo. They met while filming the HBO biopic “Boycott,”where they played Dr.Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King respectively. The couple have two small children.

Wright won an Emmy for playing Belize, the gay nurse forced to care for a homophobic lawyer Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) in “Angels in America.”He originated the role on Broadway and his experience served him well during filming.

“There were two months when I was working with Pacino during the day on ‘Angels’ and then performing ‘Topdog/Underdog’ at night,” he says. “for me, working opposite [Pacino], it doesn’t get any better than that. There was an urgency and fierceness about him.”

Looking back on the career he didn’t have, Wright sees a through-line: “Lawyers are pretty dynamic performers and storytellers. It’s not necessarily such a sharp shift in careers.”