CUSH JUMBO
The English actress, 31, who returns to the legal arena as lawyer Lucca Quinn on the SBS series The Good Fight, tells WHO’S Cynthia Wang about boxing, eating beans and having Hugh Jackman at her wedding.
What is it like to continue playing Lucca after The Good Wife ended last year?
I’ve never actually played a character on TV for this long before. It’s really special not only to carry her across from one show to the other but also to keep playing her, because I discover more about her the longer I spend in her skin.
Yet you have been back in London at the National Theatre in the play Common.
In this play, set in 1806, I’m a farmer and I spend a lot of time in a hole digging mud, and I sacrifice a pig, and I kill someone with a knife, and I’m very messy, and it’s about as far from The Good Fight as you can get! I like being a chameleon and I find it really difficult to not do at least one play a year because I miss it, being onstage, when I’m not there.
What is the most American thing you do when you’re in London?
I took up boxing in Brooklyn about a year ago because I had seen Creed in the cinema and, typical to me, I decided I was going to be a boxer, which obviously I’m really rubbish at. [ Laughs] So since I’ve gotten back here, I’ve continued boxing.
So what’s the most English thing you do in the United States?
I can’t go a week where I don’t have baked beans in the States, because I just miss beans a lot. I miss British cheese. I bake cakes and scones.
Is it true Hugh Jackman, your co-star in The River on Broadway, was a witness when you wed your partner, Sean Griffin, in December 2014?
Yeah. I got married on our stage at the Circle in the Square after our matinee show. We had worked together for several months. We asked him to be our witness and he was, and it was great. It was lovely.
What was it like to work with Hugh?
He is, by far, the best, most brilliant, gorgeous actor I’ve worked with in my whole life, and a lovely, caring person. But he’s also, like, such a dork. So silly, so funny. He’s not Wolverine in the room!