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LaTanya Richardson Jackson joined The View on Thursday to discuss starring in the new play Purpose, which is now playing at the Hayes Theatre. She began the interview by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who won a Tony Award last year for Appropriate. “He is an incredible writer [and] to be able to do a show with him is the hallmark of anyone’s career,” said Jackson.
She also talked about working with director Phylicia Rashad, whom she has known since the earlier days of Rashad’s career. “Women have a certain language. We’re able to automatically show up and sort of click,” she explained.
Recently, the performer got her official portrait at Sardi’s, commemorating a decades-long career on the New York stage. On the portrait, she wrote the words “God’s purpose,” saying that he is the reason that, at 75 years old, she is still able to memorize her lines and perform for eight shows every week. “It’s a God thing…[he] is holding me up with all of those lines!”
Take a look at photos from the Sardi’s unveiling here and watch the full interview, where she also talks about meeting her husband Samuel L. Jackson in college over 50 years ago.
Jackson is a two-time Tony Award-nominated stage and screen actress, director and producer. Her onstage Broadway credits include “Lena Younger” in the 2014 revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (Tony nomination, Best Actress in a Play), as “Calpurnia” in Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird, and as “Bertha Holly” in the 2009 revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. She is currently appearing as “Claudine Jasper” in the new Broadway play Purpose.
For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning with itself, its faith and the legacies of Black political power and familial duty.
