Zoë Wanamaker

Zoë Wanamaker busses the maître d' who greets her warmly at a restaurant near the Belasco Theatre. She then folds her compact body into a booth and smiles. It is between shows on a Wednesday and the four-time Tony-nominated Piaf, Loot, Electra and now Awake and Sing! actress settles in for a light supper and a chat. The petite Wanamaker is much more chic than the part she's playing—hard-nosed matriarch Bessie Berger—in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! Despite her differences with Bessie, the Depression-era Jewish character is close to Wanamaker's heart. The actress was brought up in London but deeply respects her pedigree as the American-born daughter of film actor/director Sam Wanamaker and performer Charlotte Holland. After being blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Sam Wanamaker settled his family in London, where he continued his theater and film career. He was instrumental in the rebuilding of the Globe Theatre but died prior to its grand opening in 1997. Appropriately, Zoë Wanamaker was the first to speak on its stage. During supper, Wanamaker discussed her father, her roots, Odets, the Tonys and the connecting line of many British actors currently on Broadway: Harry Potter.

Congratulations on your Tony nomination. What was your reaction to receiving it?
Relief! It is a relief. When you believe in something you want it to be accepted by these silly things we're given. Every time I've come here, I've gotten a Tony nomination, which is also nice. If I hadn't gotten one, I would have been really pissed off. [Laughs.]

Are you excited for the ceremony?
No, I'm not excited. I get nervous at these things because I don't think I'm comfortable with being a celebrity. You have to wear the right clothes, you've got to look this way, you've got to look that way; it's awful. When I get nervous, I get slightly hysterical. I want to laugh at the situation because I find it slightly crazy, so I have to keep my sense of humor, which is not easy sometimes because I feel guarded. So I try to be careful. I don't want to look foolish. I don't want to look silly.

Why do you think Awake and Sing! speaks to audiences in 2006?
I think it's because of Clifford Odets' 100th anniversary. I think people have discovered, with this play, something about their roots in this country, particularly in New York. Maybe it's to do with the administration that we have in this country now, and maybe it's because we have lost that connection to our roots. It has also been directed beautifully, and it's been directed with a strong political point of view. Interestingly, when I was asked to be in it, I sat down and read the play and thought it was very old-fashioned. Then [director] Bart [Sher] and I spoke on the phone, and he gave very good phone. [Laughs.] He told me about how he wanted to take it into the 21st century. That was an inspiration. I think that's the reason why it's been such a success. There was a marvelous editorial in the Sunday Times.

The editorial explained how the play is a call for people to engage with the world. Do you think Broadway—or theater in general—is a good platform for a call to action?
I don't know if it is the best platform, but theater certainly reaches people in a way that can be deep and moving. It definitely speaks to people. Theater is elite, though there is a passion in this country for theater that has been lost in England, I think. For a straight play like this to come back to Broadway, it must inspire people. It's a play that's talking about the situation now, but in a way that is a little bit more cozy because it's talking about family and family situations.

A play about a family seems easier to swallow than a play, say, about a socialist?
Yes, I think the family aspect makes people feel a little more relaxed, but actually it's about how we are looking on ourselves and not the world so much—how we are thinking life is printed on dollar bills. [The Times editorial by Adam Cohen was entitled, "Look on the World, Not on Yourself So Much," which is a line from the play.] It has a potency that makes people surprised that going to the theater could actually affect them that much. That's why I like playing in the theater—because you share an experience in the room together. I love going because I like being told a story—even when sometimes I know what the end is. You are told a story in the movies, but [theater] is more of an experience to me.

Tell me about your connection to Bessie Berger in Awake and Sing! She is not the most likable character on the stage.
No, she isn't, but I like her. I have to. She's a pragmatist—absolutely, till the end. She's constantly thinking about the money and how to survive. She gets up at 4:30 in the morning, she goes to the market, she cooks the food, she cleans the house, she darns the socks. She does everything to keep that family together. Her husband is a failure. She says, "I am the father and the mother." She understands the need to survive and be respectable. She's been driven crazy by people who are not confronting reality. She's also a bit of a narcissist. The world revolves around her, but that's because of her own morality. She tries to make everyone conform to her way of thinking. I've tried to make people understand in some way what she has to go through on a daily basis. It's Greek. It is universal.

How did you tap into her?
This play means a lot to me because my family originally came from Russia. They came here on boats to Ellis Island—or Canada, in my mother's case—when my gransparents from both sides were very young. My father's side went to Chicago: My grandfather worked in a pajama factory and was a union man. This was in the 1920s. My father and his brother were in school in Chicago and lived in a Jewish area. For me, it's my heritage. It's where I come from.

Was there anyone like Bessie Berger in your family?
My grandmother, the only one I knew on my father's side, was ill-educated. She worked very hard. She used to beat my father when he came home from school because his clothes were torn from fighting and she'd have to sew them. She was an immigrant peasant woman living in a new world, and Bessie was like millions of other mothers who had to survive in an alien country and try to conform and adapt. So in a way, Bessie is a bit like my grandmother, who I had to find ways of understanding. These women became like that trying to hold a family together, trying to give them a new life, wanting to survive and be respectable.

There are other connections between Odets and your family—blacklisting, the Group Theatre.
If it weren't for Senator McCarthy, I would have grown up here. Both my parents knew they were going to be blacklisted. Dad knew he was going to do a film in England. He'd done one and he was asked to do another, and he took the opportunity to go there. Mummy put all our stuff in storage and came over on the Queen Mary. She pretended it was to be for a holiday. They didn't come back. Daddy was subpoenaed but because he was in England, he refused to go. He'd been called a pinko by Ed Sullivan in the papers because he directed a play called Goodbye My Fancy, which Ed Sullivan had called a pinko play. And in terms of the Group Theatre [the influential theater troupe that Odets helped found and that first produced Awake and Sing!], when my parents came from Chicago—they met at the Goodman Theatre there—to New York, they studied initially with [original Group member and legendary actor/director/teacher] Lee Strasberg in his living room.

What do you think your father would make of this production of Awake and Sing!?
I think he'd love it! I hope he would. I know my mother would love it. She'd criticize but…my father used to say my mother was the better actor. I think that's true. I think she had a warmth that Dad never really had the opportunity to show onstage… not that I know of.

Tell me about the first time you stood on the stage at the Globe.
Where to begin? I'll tell you a little story. My father so wanted, when the Globe opened, for the queen to come down like Queen Elizabeth I on the barge. He believed that the Globe should be a popular center for everybody. And the fantasy was the queen should come. That's exactly what happened. They asked if I would do the opening speech of Henry V, ["O for a muse of fire…"], which would be the official first words spoken on the stage. I learned it. I was frightened. The morning of the day of the ceremony, I went in at about 7:30 in the morning. The security men let me in, and I got on to the stage and I started to say the speech. My husband started to walk around the theater to make sure he could hear me, and that was the only rehearsal I got. Security had said, "You'll be alone; don't worry about it." They were preparing for the queen to come. I finished the speech and a did a little bow, and as I lifted my head, the sun rose above the theater and hit me in the face. And from the wings I heard this clapping: The security guards were all standing around, and they had listened to it. It was the most moving moment I've ever had in my life. It was phenomenal. It was like my father was there. That's how it felt. I found it very, very emotional.

Do you feel more at home in the States or in the U.K.?
I don't know. I suppose London because I grew up there. I don't feel British at all. I never really felt I fit in anywhere. Maybe that's not such a negative thing. As long as people are pleasant, I'm happy wherever I am. They don't mention that I'm American in the press in London. I think it's accepted that I live there. They didn't say that I'm Jewish, but I am. I am a Jew and I am an American. You know what I am? I'm a Londoner.

There are four or five British actors on Broadway right now—including you—that have been in one or more Harry Potter movies.
[Laughs.] Somebody had good taste. I was in the very first one [as Madame Hooch]. I read the book because the boy who plays my younger son in the TV series I do called My Family was avidly reading it and told me I had to read it. I love that kind of thing. My whole childhood I read nothing but fairy stories. For me, it was fabulous. So when they asked me to do it, I was in heaven. It definitely gave me street cred with the kids.

See Zoë Wanamaker in Awake and Sing! at the Belasco Theatre, 111 West 44th Street. Click for tickets and more information.