Phylicia Rashad
Before we even begin, I'd like to belatedly congratulate you on winning the Tony Award.
Thank you.
Much was made in the press of the fact that you are the first African-American woman to win a Tony in the Best Actress in a Play category. How do you feel about that distinction?
The Tony Award is recognition of work, not ethnicity. I mean, that's what I've always understood it to be, and I think that's what it is and should be. I was surprised to know that because I didn't know that I was the first, and I looked to my sister and she didn't know that. Nobody seemed to know that. Nobody was aware of that. It seems that--as I walk about and talk to people--it represents a tremendous pride and gratification for many people. And that I could be a part of anything that is a sense of pride and gratification for a group of people is actually a sort of humbling experience.
And now here you are, back among a group of great, like-minded people with Gem of the Ocean.
How do you choose your roles?
I assume you're on the same page with [A Raisin in the Sun and Gem of the Ocean director] Kenny Leon. How did your working relationship develop?
What is it that puts you and him on the same page?
Yes, he played Citizen Barlow in Chicago, didn't he?
What was your impression of Gem of the Ocean when you first read it?
I read the play, but there are times when it's difficult to imagine what it will look like onstage. How do you describe it?
Yes, it does seem like his characters are revealed by what feels like everyday conversation.
Why were you concerned with playing an old character?
Did you feel the same way with A Raisin in the Sun last season?
Was it less fluid because someone else had created the role?
It seemed like the cast really rallied around Sean Combs and was very protective.
Gem of the Ocean seems like such a bigger play than the realism of Raisin. How does your approach differ?
Was the mysticism of Aunt Ester a challenge for you?
But you've been a stage actress all along!
You didn't worry about being pigeonholed?
It is difficult to describe the feeling of that recognition because I'm aware that it is the recognition of many things. The work that an actor does is not solitary; it is work that is brought to fruition by virtue of associations with great people, like-minded people, people who are constantly asking more of you than you ask of yourself.
Yes, you see what I mean.
I must say, I have been blessed with great opportunities, and sometimes I think it's more a matter of the role choosing me. That's the way it seems. I can't think of anything I actively pursued other than Medea at the Alliance Theatre some years ago. Everything else is presented to me, and I look at it. [Choosing projects] has to do with many things. It has to do with the people I'll be working with foremost because, it doesn't matter how great a play is or how wonderful a role will be, if the people I'll be working with are not on the same page, then what's the point?
Well, I started working with him a number of years ago. He came to New York casting the play Blues for an Alabama Sky that was being presented at the Alliance Theatre. At that time, he was artistic director of that theater, and he was wanting to test me in this role of Angel. I liked him when I met him. I liked him instantly. A former classmate of mine at Howard University in the Drama Department, Pearl Cleage, wrote the play that he was testing. So, I knew the play was going to be of interest to me because I know her--I know her talent and her writing. I appeared in one of her plays before at the Negro Ensemble Company, so I knew that was going to be great. The question was whether I could leave home or not because my daughter was eight-years-old at the time. I told him I had to speak to my daughter; she gave me permission to go! So, that's how I met Kenny Leon, and I must say that I have had nothing but pleasurable experiences working with him.
He is an artist with the sensibilities of the common man. He's not interested so much in what's in an actor's head as what he sees, because that's what the audience sees. Sometimes artists… well, we can become otherworldly in our work. We have all kinds of things in our imagination that are going on that are justified and make perfect sense to us, but it doesn't necessarily translate to having meaning for the audience. Kenny is very keen about that. And his artistic sensibilities are right in the way he puts his teams together to design a set, the wardrobe, lighting and sound. It's an amazing process with him every time. It's great, and with this particular endeavor it's a little different, because he steps in to fill the position [replacing original director Marion McClinton], but he knows the play because he appeared in it.
That's right. So, he knows the play very well, very well.
It made perfect sense to me. I just wondered how I was going to be old! How could I do that? But it makes perfect sense to me, and when you see the production, it will make perfect sense to you, too. The otherworldliness is grounded.
It's very beautiful. Very, very beautiful. It's a significant, meaningful play.
There's a rhythmic quality to his writing. It's the rhythm. It's his understanding and his affinity and his unity with language and the way language works. Everything in the play comes from his language. The character is in the language.
Absolutely. Isn't that masterful?
Well, it's not just playing an old character or looking old. It's being old. I wondered how that would happen, but I found it. It was all there, all in the language. Because, truthfully, I could see the woman as I read the script. I could see Ester. I could feel her, and I understood her completely. I understand her existence; I understand why she is, and who she is, and what she means, and what she holds, and what she shares, and what she keeps and what she gives. Oh, I understood it immediately.
I didn't feel that way about A Raisin in the Sun because I had seen the film, and I had seen the original performance and so many of the productions I saw afterward patterned that. They were patterned after that original production and that character, Lena Younger--I didn't like it. I didn't think it was fluid.
No, I don't think it was that. It was that when I saw the original film, I didn't buy it. I mean it was a great story, but I didn't buy it. It didn't live for me the way I wanted it to. But then when Kenny Leon asked me to read it, I read it without holding impressions of anything. I saw things I didn't see before. As an actress, I saw that this woman loved her husband in every way a woman could. I saw that she still held him in every way that a woman holds a man that she still loves. And that doesn't mean holding in hardened tragedy and sadness. There was so much light in it and love and sensuality in it. That's how I felt. And I said, "Oh! Let me have a go at this."
We were connected. The entire cast and crew I might add. We formed a family. It was an extraordinary experience.
Well, Gem of the Ocean takes place in one room, too. You think it changes places, but it doesn't. Yes, it is bigger in that way. It's a different cast and everybody doesn't work the same way. It's a different experience. But we also are a unit, a team, a family.
Everything in my life allows me to understand her. And mystical? She's very human. She's what it means to be human because she understands life in its totality--not just what's staring her in her face or what she can put her hand on. She understands its meaning and its purpose. And she understands her own heart.
Oh, this is a place I never thought I'd find myself, because when you work in television they put this brand on you: "TV actress." I didn't know that this was happening, and I remember when I discovered that. I must have been in the series for about four years--because even when we were doing Cosby, I was in theater--I went into Into the Woods as the Witch, so it never occurred to me that I was being thought of as anything other than an actress by people in the profession.
Yes, exactly. It is the place in which I trained and this is the area I worked in for many years before working in television. I was always working in theater. I was always there--you know, at the Negro Ensemble Company or the New Federal Theatre or on Broadway or Lincoln Center or the Y. I was always in theater.
I didn't think about it. When I am presented with good work, I accept it. Wherever it is.