Phylicia Rashad comfortable in role as America’s mom
When we spoke with Phylicia Rashad a couple of months ago, she was receiving the Award for Television Excellence at this year’s ATX Television Festival in Austin. But, the day before, it was the 15th anniversary of the night she made history.
On June 6, 2004, at the 58th annual Tony Awards, she became the first African-American actress to win best performance by a leading actress in a play. It was for her portrayal of Lena Younger, the struggling matriarch in that year’s Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” co-starring multiple Tony winner Audra McDonald (who won for best featured actress) and, making his Broadway debut, Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Rashad didn’t even know about this milestone until she hit the press room. “Someone asked me how does it feel to be the first African-American actress to receive this award in this category, and I said, ‘The first?’ ” Rashad remembers over the phone, laughing. “They said, ‘Yes!’ And I said, ‘Well, what happened? Nobody was ever nominated before?’ ”
These days, the 71-year-old Houston native has been receiving several honors and accolades for her body of work. In June, she was given the Jane Bishop National Theatre Award by Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta. (Leon directed Rashad in “Raisin.”) The month before that, Brooklyn’s Irondale Center held a benefit celebration at which Rashad was the recipient of the M. Edgar Rosenblum Award.
“I accept them with gratitude, I do,” she says. “Because, in these instances, I’m being honored by peers. I’ve performed with True Colors Theatre. I’ve not performed with Irondale, but I have performed with members of that company. And receiving honors from those peers, I feel very grateful for that.”
Pop-culture icon
Of course, most people know Rashad for all those years playing stern but loving mom Claire Huxtable opposite, well, you-knowwho, on that show we don’t really speak of anymore.
Though it appears the general population has given up on the other guy, people still love Rashad. People still revere her enough to cast her in matronly roles, including her memorable-mom cameo in Drake’s “In My Feelings” video last year or on a recent episode of “This Is Us,” as the mother of Susan Kelechi Watson’s Beth.
Before Mother’s Day, rappers Rapsody and Buddy even collaborated on the 9th Wonder-produced “Phylicia,” a love letter to all the powerful, wonderful moms out there — including Rashad. Not only is the song named after her, her face appears on the track’s cover artwork.
Rashad finds all these respectful shout-outs humbling because, she says, “I know the value of a mother from my own mother and from my grandmother. And to have a number of people hold me in regard in that way because of work that I’ve been privileged to do is — well, you know, there are just some things you don’t have words for. It is, needless to say, something that I never expected to happen. As an actor, you don’t expect that. But to have your work received in this way — well, that’s a lot.”
New series
Starting Wednesday, you can see Rashad once again work her maternal instincts in the new OWN drama series “David Makes Man.” Created by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the playwright who won an Oscar adapting his play “Moonlight” for the big screen, this show has Rashad as a teacher who has concerns for the title character (Akili McDowell), a smart but conflicted 14-year-old who’s having trouble breaking out of his crime/poverty-heavy, Florida environment. “It’s an original, and there’s a lot of fine, young talent in this production that are shining brightly,” she says. “And I’m very pleased to be a part of it.”
McCraney and Rashad (who previously worked together when Rashad starred in McCraney’s play “Head of Passes” in 2016) talked at length about who her character was and how she affects the protagonist. “She is one of those teachers that people remember,” she says. “You know how you look back and there might be more than one. But there is probably at least one teacher who really influenced you in a way, right? That’s who she is in this story. She’s a very welleducated woman. She is a doctor, actually — a doctor of education. Well, we talked about it, and her field of study was anthropology, and she teaches a humanities class in which she uses history and literature. She combines the two. This woman could be teaching at a Tier 1university, in a doctorate program. But she chooses to teach school on this level. She chooses to influence young people. She chooses to be there for them.”
You could say Rashad knows this character well since she’s been one of those teachers whom people remember. After all, she is the acting teacher Chadwick Boseman has said on many an occasion inspired him to act. “That’s very kind of him because he had some good teachers,” she responds.