The Rose Tattoo Star Marisa Tomei on How Playing the ‘Fiery Angel’ of the Tennessee Williams Classic Became a Family Homecoming

For Serafina Delle Rose, the headstrong center of Tennessee Willams’ The Rose Tattoo, the image of the romantic red flower, which first appeared as a tattoo on her husband Rosario’s chest, holds great spiritual meaning. 

Marisa Tomei, the great Oscar-winning actress who is currently playing the great role at the American Airlines Theatre, got her own message from a rose during the agonizing wait to find out if she would be able to revisit the show, which she first played to great acclaimed at Williamstown Theatre Festival for three weeks in summer 2016.

“You never know ’til you know in this business,” Tomei told Paul Wontorek on the latest episode of Show People with Paul Wontorek. “I longed for her, missed her. There were a couple of times where I thought, ‘This isn’t gonna happen. Give up.’” But Tomei unexpectedly found comfort when she picked up British stage star Simon Callow’s 1999 memoir Love Is Where It Falls. “The first paragraph says, ‘It’s your rose. You have to protect your rose,’” Tomei shares. “I felt like it was speaking to me.”

Once a return engagement was confirmed, Tomei dove headfirst back into the role of Serafina in director Trip Cullman’s staging, the first Broadway production of The Rose Tattoo in 24 years, bringing the Sicilian heroine to life with great humor and passion: “Her name means ‘fiery angel who sews,’ which is exactly what she is.”

The Italian-American star is one-quarter Sicilian herself, from her material grandmother, although her family didn’t really speak of it during her upbringing in Flatbush, Brooklyn. “[My grandmother] died very young,” Tomei reveals. “We didn’t talk about her that much, so there was something in [doing this play] that led me to an inner dialogue with my grandma who I didn’t really know, and an external dialogue with my mom.” In short, Tomei reveals, “This journey was a homecoming for me.”

The Rose Tattoo is perhaps the most romantic of Williams’ works, as it was written during a blissful time, as the playwright was high on love he’d found with his Sicilian partner, Frank Merlo. “You can’t be inside this play and have any doubt that they weren’t truly, deeply in love and that they were a match,” Tomei says. “And an intellectual match, too. [Williams] fell in love with Sicily, too and he makes Serefina smart, and Rosa, the daughter, even smarter. There’s no disparaging of the Italians. He elevates them, and I think all of that comes from his love of Frank.”

Tomei made her film debut with a one-line role in the 1984 Matt Dillon vehicle The Flamingo Kid, which led to acclaimed off-Broadway turns in Daughters and Beirut, on TV in the Cosby Show spin-off A Different World and then a big screen career that took off after her hilarious Oscar-winning turn in My Cousin Vinny. When asked if she had a hunger to succeed in the early days, Tomei points out the difference in the times: “It was a different time culturally. There wasn’t social media and cameras everywhere. So, when you talk about ‘hunger,’ it wasn’t like what we associate with hunger now. It was just a need, a therapeutic need—like, I have to do this to express feelings that I don’t even know I have.”

Surprisingly, Tomei revealed her true Broadway goal is to star in a musical, a dream that maybe was sparked during her family’s multiple trips to Manhattan to see A Chorus Line when she was a teen. “I was lucky enough to see that a few times,” she says. “We were all just like holding hands—you find those things as a family where you connect, and that was one of those things.” When Tomei received the original cast album as an Easter present, it became the constant soundtrack in the home and inspired her brother Adam, then Marisa, then her parents to take tap lessons in Carroll Gardens. “We took family tap lessons at one point!” she laughs.

Although plans to star in Sweet Charity back in 2002 never came to be, Tomei holds the role of Charity Hope Valentine close to her heart. For now, perhaps her greatest musical triumph was an early one, when she played bombshell Hedy LaRue in her eighth grade production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Her biggest memory? “I just remember I was focused on the pencil skirts,” she says. “I’m usually an inside-out kind of actor, but sometimes I’m like, ‘I need the right underwear; I need the right skirt!’”

Mostly, Tomei focuses on keeping her acting resume interesting and getting to sink her teeth into beautiful plays with something to say, like The Rose Tattoo. “I just love words so much,” she gushes. “I think about Top Girls or Will Eno’s play [The Realistic Joneses]. I think it’s the wordsmithing that’s exciting for me. And, thematically, what are we exploring? Those things draw me in.”

Tomei hopes to continue balancing Hollywood with Broadway throughout her career. But ultimately, she admits, theater is “where my heart and soul is.”

Watch the full episode of Show People with Paul Wontorek below!

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