Tony First-Timers: Far from Blush and Bashful, Prayer for the French Republic's Betsy Aidem Treasures Being a 'Late Bloomer'

Exactly 40 years ago, Betsy Aidem talked her way into John Malkovich’s now legendary off-Broadway production of Balm in Gilead alongside future stars Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney. “I crashed that audition,” she confessed to Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek on The Broadway Show. “I was impatient, I was fearless and adventurous, and I had a certain kind of rage.” Four decades later, those qualities re-emerged in her extraordinary performance as the matriarch of a Parisian Jewish family in Joshua Harmon’s Tony-nominated drama Prayer for the French Republic. Now, at age 66, Aidem is a first-time Tony nominee for Best Leading Actress in a Play.

“It’s a complete surprise,” the actress says of being honored alongside Jessica Lange, Rachel McAdams, Sarah Paulson and Amy Ryan. “It’s dizzying, and it’s so unexpected, which may be the key to longevity—to have no expectations.” Modesty aside, Aidem has long been a secret weapon for playwrights as varied as Adam Rapp (her fellow Tony nominee for the book of The Outsiders), Richard Nelson, A.R. Gurney and Theresa Rebeck. In 2007, she won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. Oh, and she played doomed bride-to-be Shelby in the 1987 off-Broadway premiere of Steel Magnolias. (More on that shortly.)

Aidem fell in love with acting in her hometown of East Meadow, Long Island, 30 miles from Manhattan. Cast as the fairy Cobweb in a high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream staged on the roof of the gym, she recalls, “[Theater] felt like a big circus that you were running away with. It seemed like this crazy dream, and I was like, ‘I’m going toward that.’” After graduating from NYU, she ran up an impressive string of off-Broadway dramatic credits, including Balm in Gilead, Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind and Road.

“I had no dream, except to work,” she remembers. “My plan was just to see the work that excited me and find a way to put myself in the path of the people who made it.” In the era before cell phones, Aidem recalls mailing out resumes attached to the back of glossy headshots and using an answering service to take messages from her agent. “It was a really corny time,” she says with a laugh, “but I had to figure things out and create my own opportunities.”

A big break came when Aidem won the role of Shelby in Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s love letter to his late sister. “I had to be blonde, under contract,” she says, “and it was a career-changing moment because of the press attention. All the old movie stars came when they heard there were older roles.” Bette Davis turned the box office into her private smoking room, Lucille Ball was in tears over Aidem’s performance, Elizabeth Taylor and Rex Harrison posed for photos backstage, and on and on. She remains close to co-stars Margo Martindale (Truvy), Constance Shulman (Annelle) and 93-year-old Rosemary Prinz (M’Lynn), but admits that in real life, her colors are not blush and bashful: “I’ve had a hard time wearing pink ever since I did that play, and I haven’t been blonde since, either.”

On a much more serious note, Aidem has spent most of the past few years acting in two acclaimed family dramas examining the effects of antisemitism: Tom Stoppard’s Tony-winning Leopoldstadt and Prayer for the French Republic. She began working on Harmon’s play before the pandemic, recalling her excitement upon reading the script, which runs three hours in performance. “Sometimes a role meets you at the [perfect] moment in your life and asks for everything you have in your toolbox and more,” she says of Marcelle, a no-nonsense psychiatrist who questions everything about her family history after her son, a teacher who wears a yarmulke, is beaten up near his school.

First produced off-Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club in 2022, Prayer for the French Republic was remounted on Broadway by MTC in December 2023. In every iteration, audiences have responded with deep emotion, telling Aidem, “We need to tell this story.” As the actress notes, “It was written in 2016 about antisemitism in Paris, and the unprecedented rise of it in America took us by surprise. Remounting the play after October 7 had a completely different meaning.”

Reflecting on her “unbelievable” Tony nomination, Aidem says lightly, “I feel like I’ve been occupying this thin space between extremely late bloomer and posthumous, so I’m grateful that this happened while I’m alive.” Her grown son will accompany her to the ceremony, and she’s determined to enjoy every minute. “I was never invited to this whole thing before,” she says of theater awards season, “so I feel a little like I’m crashing the party. At the same time, I’ve done 80-some-odd plays. The day they announced the Tonys, my phone buzzed all day long. It’s a community—that’s the best part.”

GET TO KNOW THE TONY FIRST-TIMERS
Left to Right: COREY STOLL (Appropriate) | LESLIE RODRIGUEZ KRITZER (Spamalot) | JOSHUA BOONE (The Outsiders) | BETSY AIDEM (Prayer for the French Republic)

Watch the full episode of The Broadway Show with Tamsen Fadal highlighting all four of these first-time Tony nominees, and flip through the complete gallery of photos from our exclusive Broadway.com photo shoot.

The Broadway Show Credits: Directed by Zack R. Smith | Producers: Paul Wontorek and Beth Stevens | Senior Producers: Caitlin Moynihan and Lindsey Sullivan | Videographers: Shaun Copeland, Nick Shakra, and Ryan Windess
Photo Credits: Photography by Emilio Madrid | Photo Assistants: Alan Padilla and Cooper Hammel | Location: Corner Studio
Styling Credits: Styling: Jake Sokoloff | Hair and Make-up: Angella Valentine and Tameeka Lee Walker | Wardrobe: MacDuggal dress, Inez shoes