Cherry Jones, Part One

When I was living in New York City's West Village, I got the chance to do an interview with Cherry which turned out to be the cover story of a magazine called Upstages.

Back before she won her second TONY award for Doubt, she'd become the
toast of Broadway for her first TONY award-winning performance in a play called The Heiress.

(excerpt):

"I'm outside a downtown cafe waiting for Cherry Jones. Scanning the horizon I'm not quite sure who to look for. After years in regional theatre and short-lived New York productions she has finally achieved Broadway Star status with her role in last season's The Heiress. Since chances are good that she won't come gliding down Seventh Avenue in a hoopskirt and bonnet, I'm not sure I'll even recognize her.

When Cherry does arrive I'm a little shocked to find her so tall, striking and, well, contemporary. She's immediately engaging and focused, with a smoky trace of a drawl from her childhood in Paris, Tennessee. Shiny sky blue eyes, set in translucent, lightly freckled sin, crinkle up when she laughs. Underneath her lanky, athletic grace I glimpse a mischievous child. We talk about the long run of The Heiress.

DA: It was a year, wasn't it?
CJ: Just under a year - something like 371 performances with just one day off a week. And I didn't take vacation and I didn't miss a show, so it was really 371 performances.
DA: I loved the first image we had of Catherine, coming down the stairs, so erect.
CJ: I wanted Catherine to have one thing that she did really well. I imagined that when she was a little girl she saw some beautiful woman, who she wished had been her mother, floating down a staircase. And from that moment on she practiced over and over to get it.

...on going in as a replacement in Angels in America:

CJ: I'm a pretty athletic person and I don't have a fear of heights. That said, I didn't have enough rehearsal time to get completely comfortable up there. In one of my first performances as the "angry angel" in the black costume, I had to do a flip. Well, I got halfway through it, to where my head was pointing straight down and my feet straight up, and got stuck. My girlfriend said I looked like this huge bat from hell, hanging there upside down. I finally had to just grab the wires and pull myself up. Just a little humiliating. The real nightmare was just trying to fit into a piece and never feeling really comfortable and strong and true. "Nightmare" is too strong a word. I got that from Maureen Stapleton.

When I first moved to New York I went to see her in The Gin Game. The next day she came into a restaurant where I was working and I said, "Oh Miss Stapleton, I saw you last night in The Gin Game and I just thought you were fantastic." And her eyes just rolled around in her head and she went, "Ahhhhh! It was a nightmare!" and she flew out of the place. So ever since, when I find myself in difficult positions, I just think of Maureen and it's like, "Well, ma'am, now I know what you mean."

2005, all rights reserved

MORE CHERRY TO FOLLOW