Ketanji Brown Jackson, pictured in September, fulfilled a longtime dream by making a cameo in a Broadway musical this weekend.
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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made her Broadway debut this weekend. She additionally made historical past as the primary member of the nation’s highest court docket to grace its storied stage, in response to the manufacturing that invited her.
Jackson appeared in a one-night-only walk-on function on Saturday night time within the Tony-nominated romantic comedy musical & Juliet, a contemporary tackle Shakespeare’s tragedy that imagines what would have occurred if the feminine protagonist survived and took management of her personal life.
The present introduced Jackson’s efficiency a number of days prematurely, writing on Instagram that the justice would additionally take part in a talkback with the viewers afterward. Jackson additionally spoke about it on Saturday’s episode of NPR’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me, recorded in New York City hours earlier than she took the stage.
“They have invited me to do a particular walk-on function that I’m advised they wrote for me,” she mentioned. “So I’m very excited.”
Later, & Juliet posted behind-the-scenes footage on social media displaying Jackson rehearsing songs and choreography, getting her hair and make-up finished and making an attempt on her monochromatic teal costume that includes dishevelled denims, a tunic and a corset.
It additionally captures the second when a forged member brings Jackson onstage, on the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, introducing her by title because the night time’s “very particular visitor.” Jackson ran onto the stage — and later took her last bows — to roars of applause.
“I did it!” Jackson exclaims on the finish of the video. “I made it to Broadway.”
Jackson has lengthy been open about her “unabashed love of theater,” as she referred to as it in her 2024 memoir Lovely One. She illustrated it additional by singing just a few traces from The Wiz and Schoolhouse Rock throughout an interview on her e book tour this fall.
In the memoir, Jackson describes writing in her software to Harvard University — the place she earned her undergraduate and legislation levels — that “I needed to attend Harvard as I believed it would assist me ‘to satisfy my fantasy of changing into the primary Black, feminine Supreme Court justice to look on a Broadway stage.’ “
Jackson went on to pursue theater throughout her time at Harvard, together with performing in a manufacturing of Little Shop of Horrors (alongside frequent Wait Wait panelist Mo Rocca). She additionally took a drama class wherein she was as soon as a scene accomplice with future Academy Award-winner Matt Damon, as she recalled within the Wait Wait interview.
“We did the scene, and it was some play that did not have an entire lot of motion like Waiting For Godot or one thing, the place you are simply sitting on the stage,” she mentioned. “But on the finish, the professor mentioned, ‘Oh, Ketanji, you have been so good. Matt, we’ll speak.’ “
Jackson turned the primary Black lady to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court after she was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2022.
It took simply two extra years to make the remainder of her fantasy a actuality.
“I received a name, and somebody mentioned, ‘We heard that this was your lifelong dream,’ ” Jackson advised NPR. “And it’s — to be a Broadway performer and a justice.”
Jackson is not the one Supreme Court justice with a ardour for the performing arts.
The late justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ideological opposites, famously bonded over their love for opera — a friendship that impressed a comic book opera in 2015. One yr later, at age 83, Ginsburg made her onstage debut (with a talking function) in a one-night-only cameo because the Duchess of Krakenthorp in a Washington National Opera efficiency of The Daughter of the Regiment.
