Cherry Jones (right) with Lisa Joyce in Doubt. Pics by Craig Schwartz_____
Over a decade ago on national television at the Tony Awards, Cherry Jones thanked her partner upon being named Best Actress and she instantly became the most visible lesbian actress in the world. She has been called the finest stage actress of her generation and has garnered innumerable awards along the way.
In the early '90s as a college theatre major, I read an article about Jones, a native of Tennessee, who was capturing attention on New York City stages. Somehow I felt a kinship to her—her Southern roots, her passion for theatre and some other undefinable quality that solidified a common bond between us. Then I saw her onstage—and it was pure magic. If you have seen Jones on stage, you know why I was caught in her spell. She is transcendent, raw and utterly captivating. I followed her career, read everything I could about her and made every attempt to see her on stage.
It was quite an honor to talk with Jones recently while she was on tour with the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning production of Doubt. We discussed the cold season and our remedies; her recent 50th birthday party where her girlfriend, Sarah Paulson, flew many of her friends to celebrate with her in San Francisco; and Jones' illustrious career. She was self-effacing in a charming way, unpretentious and warm with a gentle laugh. And I found we had more of a common bond than I had known.
Windy City Times: Cherry, you grew up in Paris, Tenn., and I grew up in eastern Tennessee in a small town named Cleveland. Describe your childhood.
Cherry Jones: Well I was a tomboy and I had a dog named Lassie.
WCT: I had a dog named Lassie but it was a boy.
CJ: So was mine! Who knew at that point? Gender confusion even then. [ Paris ] was just this wonderful little town and my playmates and I were always just left to roam. We were always in the woods playing games and making up other realities from
our own. My daddy had a flower shop down on the court square and my mother taught English at the high school. It was just this wonderful very close-knit small town of about 10,000 people.
WCT: When did your sexuality come into play? And did that happen when you were in Tennessee in that small-town environment?
CJ: Yeah, I pretty much had it figured out by the time I was about 12, I guess, and certainly after my dear mother told me the facts of life. She told me not only about heterosexuality and how incredible it was— [ but ] she made it sound like so much fun; she wasn't prudish in the way she talked about it. She said that, hopefully, I would find the man of my dreams and marry before I had sex, but if I ever got into trouble my parents would be there for me. They were just incredible parents.
And THEN, she told me about homosexuality. She said that it was frowned upon by many people, but in our church—the Methodist church—we are tolerant towards all. Of course, that was her Methodist church. She even pointed to a man she knew I respected very much, a pianist who was a friend of my parents. He would play concerts in my little hometown for the arts council, and I was always so impressed by him; my mother used him as an example of a homosexual.
So [ then ] I realized I knew a homosexual. When you're given that kind of thorough introduction to human sexuality with such love and such care ... It certainly made my transition into being an open lesbian a heck of a lot easier, because I always knew that I would have their love and so few of us have that blessing.
WCT: After [ college ] , you ended up [ as ] a founding member of American Repertory Theatre, working with amazing artists like Robert Brustein and Andrei Serban. I assume that world was probably more accepting of your sexuality?
CJ: Yeah, I mean it was never [ an issue ] . I never wanted to do much of anything but act on stage. I just have always, always, always loved the theater. Movies never really held much interest for me—especially once I started doing them. It's just a completely different world and a different lifestyle and a different way of working.
WCT: What is the seduction [ of theater ] ?
CJ: It's that you have a built in family of fellow artists, especially at American Repertory Theater. It was a company. You signed on like you are signing onto a military tour of duty. You never knew where you were going to be sent next, what role you were going to be asked to play. We would work 12- to-14-hour days. We would rehearse one play by day and do another play at night, or perhaps perform two different plays in the evening, so all cylinders were charged and in full action. It was an exhilarating place to be. If anyone had any doubts about the theater, it would have revitalized their love for the theater. It was just intoxicating!
WCT: The first time I ever saw you was in Our Country's Good. You were brilliant—so fierce, unapologetic and startling as Liz Morden. The next year, I saw you in The Baltimore Waltz. I had just come out and I have to say that I fell in love with you and the play. For an AIDS play, it was such a revelation in that it was hilarious and poignant, realistic and fantastical. Can you talk about your work with lesbian playwright Paula Vogel?
CJ: We just saw each other last month and I have a new play of hers on my bedside table right now. She handed us [ Waltz ] ready to go. Lesbian director Anne Bogart directed it. Joe Mantello, now the famous director, was in the production and a wonderful man named Richard Thompson was the brother. It was a fantasy that Paula had written about her…brother [ who ] had died of AIDS. She created this fantasy that she was the one who was ill and that her brother was taking her all over Europe to find this cure for her illness. It was an AIDS play, but it was also ... a play about loss, loving and memory. It was just an extraordinary script.
When I first read it, I had no idea what it was about. I couldn't follow it. It was too abstract for my little literal linear mind. I remember about a week into rehearsals, I just wanted to be fired because I didn't think I could do it. Joe had done a workshop of it before and he said this play has a heartbeat of its own. Listen to it and trust it and it will take us. And Anne Bogart's direction was also so lean and spare and just beautiful.
I remember we were having particular trouble with one scene one day and we realized that [ Paula ] was tiptoeing towards the door. She was leaving and we all stopped and Anne said, 'Where are you going?' [ Paula ] looked at us and her face was bright red; she had these tears in her eyes and said, 'I'm going to go rewrite the scene.' What she didn't realize was it was just a bunch of lughead actors and a director slugging our way through a difficult scene trying to figure out how to make it work. It was beautiful on the page. She didn't need to change it. We just were trying to work our way into it. We always kid her about that. We made her come back and sit down and understand that it wasn't her. It was us.
WCT: You [ and Paula ] both have great humility in your talents. Many would say The Heiress on Broadway made you a star. I believe you were a star long before, but … how did the Tony Award and the confirmation of your sexuality on national television impact you?
CJ: Well the Tony didn't impact me at all. What impacted me was that it's attached to your name once you win one. So, when you're being introduced it becomes a familiar old friend. What made a difference was that so many people were so pleased by that production and that performance. Because I mean my work was just fine, but she's one of those characters that people just sort of fall in love with because she's so vulnerable and such the underdog. [ Plus, ] it's this wonderful melodrama and people just loved that Lincoln Center production.
As far as it affecting me that I kissed Mary [ Jones' former partner ] after I won, it made a difference to gay people [ but ] not to straight people. I never felt any effect from having done that, but I know it mattered to a lot of gay people. I was thunderstruck by that, because I live in this completely openly gay world and I have for my entire adult life. So, in a way it reminded me of just how far we still have to go in the hinterland of the country in making everyone comfortable enough to be open about their sexuality. I became someone who people approached when they were having difficulty in coming out with their families, which always meant a great deal to me that people felt they could approach me about their personal problems with their loved ones. That was the big surprise.
WCT: It [ created ] a connection, I think. When people come out publicly even if they never lived really in [ the closet ] … the community embraces them and feels tethered to them. You are coming to Chicago on a huge tour with Doubt, in which you starred on Broadway. Can you tell us about Doubt and Sister Aloysius?
CJ: Aloysius is a Bronx Catholic grade school principal … a sister in the Sisters of Charity. Sister Aloysius suspects the young parish priest is up to no good with one of the boys, and that's sort of the jumping-off point for the play. What it becomes is this debate and this tug-of-war for the audience. I start to find ways to undermine and expose this priest, but what happens is the audience sits back, they lean forward and they start to decide for themselves if he's guilty or innocent. And it becomes almost like a Rorschach test to people's souls and judgment.
Playwright John Patrick Shanley said that when he was growing up, people with doubt were considered wise people and now people with doubt are considered weak people [ who are ] non-religious, unpatriotic and godless. He said he's just so fed up with everyone in this country screaming at each other from entrenched positions on both sides of the wall, and that we've lost the ability to listen and deliberate and to reason. We just want to know we're right [ and to ] be certain in our rightness, because it's a much more comfortable position. It is uncomfortable having doubt and uncertainty. It is not as comforting a feeling as being absolutely sure. It is part of the reason this country has been so blinded by certainty and been so seduced by certainty. But I do think the scales are falling from people's eyes now.
WCT: Certainly since the last election. You've been performing this play for…
CJ: I've done about 550 performances now.
WCT: Wow! In doing a Broadway run night to night, there are differences [ with each audience ] , but with such a change in the political climate and [ being ] on tour, does it feel palpably different out there night to night, week to week, and city to city?
CJ: It's hard to know. The audience's response feels remarkably similar wherever we play. I mean we get bigger laughs on certain lines in some cities and depending on how many Catholics we have in the audience who recognize the father and the sister with affection or without.
This is the most dependable play I've ever worked on. I'd bet that if we polled the audience on any given night, no matter what happened on stage and no matter who was in the audience, you'd get about a quarter of the people believing he was right and a quarter of the audience believing she was right, and you'd get about half of the audience having doubt. That seems to be how it generally breaks down. We actually polled the audience on Broadway when we were collecting for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and that's always how it broke down.
WCT: What were you drawing from, growing up moderately Methodist in Tennessee, to tap into Sister Aloysius?
CJ: Well, first of all, the writing is just so extraordinarily good. It's such a beautifully drawn character. You really get a sense of who she is on the page. And then I had this fantastic Mr. Doug Hughes directing and keep [ ing ] it balanced. I, of course, want everyone to understand and love my character, and Doug made it very clear to me that she has to be pretty appalling—so we have to balance people's innate prejudice now against priests. People walk into a theater and see a man in a collar and already they're going, 'I don't know,' you know, and it's terrible.
So I knew that it was going to be equally important for the audience to see at her core that [ Sister Aloysius ] is a good human being who's trying to do her job, which is to protect those children no matter what. Yet, there's this overlay. There's this crusty crotchety overlay of the rigidity she was brought up with, having been born around 1900. She's a Catholic from another time. It takes place in 1964; I imagine she's about 62 years old.
There were all sorts of questions in the script. She was married before she became a nun, but she didn't have children. Why? And so I decided that she had had a hysterectomy. So, her bones at 62 are incredibly brittle and she has terrible osteoporosis, and she's not in very good health. But she has this fiery will and strength that compensates for her actually rather frail frame. It gave me a contrast to play with as an actor. I had to come up with a back story that explained her ability to be that quickly placed on high red alert, so I gave myself a whopping back story that has fueled me now for 550 performances.
WCT: Why go on tour? A lot of original cast members don't go on tour with a show. It's a huge dedication.
CJ: Well, this play is so good and this production is such a perfect fit, and I knew [ they ] were going to [ cast ] father Flynn [ with ] this beautiful actor named Chris McGary who had stood by for Brian O'Byrne on Broadway; then there's Caroline Clay, who stood by for Adriane Lenox on Broadway. Then, we added to that mix a Chicago graduate from DePaul University, Lisa Joyce, who's fantastic as Sister Jane, and I just wanted so much to be the one who brought it to the country. It's like a privilege to get to do this play around the country.
WCT: Is film somewhere you want to continue to move your career?
CJ: The more I've done it, the more I've started to appreciate and enjoy it.
WCT: It pays the bills.
CJ: It's like winning the state lottery or something. It's a wonderful way to do something for just a couple of weeks. I only play these little parts that are kind of wonderful. I go in and work for a week or two and then I get to leave with half of the bank. For a theater performer, the [ pay ] is just outlandish! But it does help you to work in any kind of theater you choose to pursue.
WCT: You are doing a production you couldn't be more thrilled to be working on AND you are currently a part of what is being described as a 'lesbian power couple' with actress Sarah Paulson ( Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ) .
CJ: [ Gentle laugh ]
WCT: Is this the best of times? Do you just feel like your life couldn't be any fuller?
CJ: Well, it could be more stationary.
Doubt plays the LaSalle Bank Theater in Chicago through Jan. 28. Call 312-9021400 or visit broadwayinchicago.com . For details on the tour, visit doubtthetour.com .
