Hail to the Chief! Cherry Jones Gets Sworn in on 24

“I feel the power!” Cherry Jones declares with a laugh. And no wonder: Broadway’s favorite drama queen is now the leader of the free world as U.S. President Allison Taylor on the Emmy-winning drama 24. Jones assumes the oath of office on November 23 during a two-hour TV movie designed to set up the show’s seventh season, which officially begins in January.

“The audience will learn about Allison Taylor as I did, one episode at a time,” teases Jones, a two-time Tony winner for The Heiress and Doubt, who appeared on Broadway most recently alongside Ralph Fiennes in Faith Healer. In fact, by the time the actress filmed her fictional inauguration, she had already shot 12 action-packed episodes, eight before the Hollywood writers’ strike last year and four in the spring. “[24 co-creator] Joel Surnow told me that actors love working on this show because there’s no past and no future—there’s only the moment, and that’s true,” Jones says. “You have to be ready to make sense of just about anything, which is a new and delicious experience for me.”

So, is Jones channeling Hillary? Sarah Palin wasn’t on the scene when she created President Taylor. “I didn’t try to be like anybody, because there’s no road map for playing a President on days as dreadful as the ones on 24,” she says of the terror-centric plots. “But there were a couple of moments this season when I thought, ‘Oh God, I’m just like John Wayne!’” Jones shares scenes with Stratford theater vet Colm Feore as First Gentleman Henry Taylor and Evita’s original Juan Peron, Bob Gunton, as White House chief of staff. “Bob and I were on the sailboat together in The Perfect Storm,” she recalls. “He was my captain, and now I like to remind him that I’m his captain.”

Jones, of course, is best known to theater fans for her unforgettable performance as no-nonsense Catholic school principal Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, which centers on her character’s suspicions of predatory behavior by a young priest. Shanley directed a soon-to-be-released feature film version starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role created by Brian F. O’Byrne, with Amy Adams as an innocent young nun created onstage Heather Goldenhersh and Viola Davis as the mother of a scholarship student created by Tony winner Adriane Lenox. Seeing a sneak preview of the movie “was like being in a dream,” Jones says. “When you’ve done something 708 times, to hear those lines and see that church and that playground, which had only existed in my imagination, was so much fun. It didn’t look or play exactly as I expected, but I found myself completely pulled into the story as though I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

It’s not unusual for even the most celebrated stage stars to be replaced on the big screen, and Jones generously insists that she never expected to play Aloysius in the movie. “You have to be pragmatic in this business, and I don’t know film that well,” she says. “Even on 24, there are going to be times when I piss away a moment because I don’t understand the nuances of working in front of a camera. Also, John was directing it, and he needed a clean palette. There is no way, after working with [Broadway director] Doug Hughes, that any of us from the play could have come in completely free and open to whatever John wanted to do that was markedly different from what Doug did with us. You get that performance in your blood, and you would think, ‘I’ve done this 708 times—you’re going to lose them if you play this scene more quickly or more slowly.’ So John needed a virginal group of brilliant film actors.”

As for Streep’s performance, Jones says, “What I loved most is that there’s never any doubt that what she’s doing is for the protection of her flock. There’s a ferocity that’s so clearly about the children and not because she’s got other baggage. I’m sure part of that stems from being the mother of four [in real life]. I’m excited that I get to go to the [movie] premiere and tell Meryl myself what I thought of her performance.” In any case, Jones’ place in the Doubt pantheon is secure, and she knows it. “There’s a sense of sorority because I share the role, which I got to create, with Meryl Streep and Eileen Atkins and Linda Hunt and Linda Lavin and Candice Chappell, and hundreds of other women because it’s been done in so many towns across the country. Everyone has something unique and rich to bring to the role.”

For now, Jones is enjoying spraying her hair into a helmeted pageboy and donning conservative suits and high heels as President Allison Taylor. “I do not have a Saks Fifth Avenue wardrobe,” she says with a laugh. “I’m more like Jones New York. I am for the people, baby! Listen, it’s 24—I need a suit of armor.”