Tony nominee Rashad relishing role
There are plenty of awards-show clichés — “It’s just an honor to be nominated” chief among them — but come the Tony Awards telecast Sunday evening, Condola Rashad will likely have her hopes pinned on that other maxim: “Third time’s a charm.”
The actress has appeared in four Broadway plays and been nominated for a Tony (best featured actress in a play) three of those times: for the family drama “Stick Fly,” “The Trip to Bountiful” and for her current performance at the Golden Theatre in “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” a rousing, riveting and very funny new sequel to the 1879 Ibsen classic.
The show is up for eight Tonys, the most of any play this year, including best play, direction and noms for each of the four actors.
Rashad, 30, daughter of Phylicia Rashad of “The Cosby Show” fame and football great Ahmad Rashad, spoke in advance of the Tonys.
Q: What’s intriguing about this show is the way you speak and behave in contemporary ways yet are dressed in period costumes. Was it disorienting when you first put on the corsets and big dresses?
A: Well, we ladies were given our corsets early, to get used to moving in them. Laurie decided she’d move like a modern woman. But I kind of wanted to find this physical body for my character that feels more classical. Emmy speaks in quick unfinished sentences, like a fast-running train, so I had to put the corset on to figure out how and when I was going to breathe.
Q: The cast is all up for Tony Awards. Your third nomination.
A: It feels like the first. When I was first nominated … my show had closed and everybody was on to other projects. It was just me on my lonesome. I was a little bit broke back then and couldn’t afford my own publicist, so I missed this whole publicity circuit. When I was nominated for “A Trip to Bountiful,” that was an honor because I was there with Miss Tyson.
Q: Ahh, I interviewed Cicely Tyson once. I thought, “This must be what it feels like to meet the Dalai Lama.”
A: Ohhh, yes. I was still kind of broke then, so I still didn’t have a publicist. Now, this year, I’m happy to say I can afford a publicist. And so now I know what it’s like to be a nominee. But at the end of the day, you have to put it out of your mind and get to work. Because it’s the work that got you here.