2010 Tony nominee David Alan Grier and film star Kerry Washington will play their final performance in the Broadway production of David Mamet’s Race on June 13, while Emmy winner James Spader will depart the cast following the June 20 performance.

The play, directed by Mamet, has also announced that it will now close at the Barrymore Theatre on Saturday, August 21, rather than the previously reported August 23. The current cast also features Richard Thomas. Replacement casting will be announced at a later date.

In the play, three attorneys, two black and one white, are offered a chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black woman.

The production features sets by Santo Loquasto, lighting design by Brian Macdevitt, and costumes by Tom Broecker. As recently reported, the play recouped its investment.

From Theater Mania

Kerry Washington didn’t plan it this way, but in most of her film roles, she has played a mother or someone who is about to become a mother. In the drama “Mother and Child,” Washington (who in real life is single with no children) plays a Los Angeles woman named Lucy, who is desperately trying to trying to have a baby. When Lucy realizes that she may be infertile, she and her husband, Joseph (played by David Ramsey), decide to adopt instead, and an adoption arrangement is made with a pregnant teen named Ray (played Shareeka Epps).

Meanwhile, “Mother and Child” (written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia) also tells the stories of two other women in the Los Angeles area — a physical therapist named Karen (played by Annette Bening) and an attorney named Elizabeth (played by Naomi Watts) — who have their own adoption issues that may or may not have to do with what Lucy is experiencing. I recently caught up with Washington at the “Mother and Child” press junket in New York City, where she talked about why she’s been playing so many maternal roles, how her experience doing the Broadway play “Race” has affected her as an actress, and what it’s like to be a member of Barack Obama’s administration.

Do you have any personal ties to Inwood House, a non-profit organization aimed at sex education and helping pregnant teens? The New York premiere of “Mother and Child” was organized in part to benefit Inwood House.

Our producer is in with them. Which one of our producers is it? Lisa Marie Falcone … Lisa is awesome.

What attracted you to the “Mother and Child” script?

It was brilliant. It’s just an incredible piece of writing. It was an incredible piece of dramatic literature just on the page. I felt when I was reading it that I can already see these women and hear these women. That for me is a sign that I want to really do this project when I’m reading it. I can I hear Lucy in my head and I can see how she walks and all of that. That was very vivid for me. It’s just a beautiful piece of writing.

It was very clear to me that this was a film about three women who undergo massive transformations in their lives over the course of the film. That is fantastic for us actresses, because we often are the people who hold hands of the people who are going through traumatic transformations in their lives, so it was great. It was really exciting.

How did you get geared up for the emotionally wrenching hospital scene?

It’s interesting because I’m not a mother and I’ve never tried to be a mother. It’s nothing that I could not relate to specifically in those terms, but I do know what it feels like to want something very much that you can’t control. I understand that. I also think that it’s the magical “what if,” which is what we do as actors. We ask ourselves, “What if that happened to me? What if it did? How would I feel? What would I do?” And then, “What if I [were] Lucy? How would she feel? What would she do?”

I always feel that the emotional truth comes from, “What do I know about this? Where can I relate to this? Where do I have to do to match my heart to what her heart is going through?” Character is then how that is expressed. Character to me, “How does she walk? How doe she talk? We both run, but is how does she run?”

There was sort of a surprise that happened that when we blocked [the scene], we talked about this would happen, that would happen, then the scene would be over. You know that a role is really beautifully written when you find surprises along the way. So we were doing that scene in the hallway, and then it was over. And in the moment, I thought, “Wait a minute, this woman doesn’t give up.”

The whole film is about [Lucy] think it’s going one way, then the universe changes it on her. She goes back, and now she’s got it. She’s very tenacious. In the moment, I decided to go for it again, which wasn’t something that we rehearsed, but I felt that like that was who Rodrigo had written: a woman who wouldn’t give up after one try; she would go for it again. You got these wonderful surprises along the way when the material is really great and you’re working with great people.

What do you think about the relationship that Lucy had with her mother, Ada? Did your own mother influence you in any way?

I have a really kick-ass mom. She is awesome. She’s really smart, really supportive. She desperately did not want me to be an actor, but put up with it anyway. She’s a pretty incredible good role model. She’s somebody who has balanced a marriage, motherhood, and a fantastic career. She’s now a retired professor of education. I don’t know how she did all that, but she somehow did. We have a really great relationship.

It’s different than the relationship [Lucy and Ada have] in the film. I think they have a little more obvious tension than my mother and I have, but I like their relationship in the film. There’s a lot of kinetic energy. And working with S. Epatha [Merkerson, who plays Ada] was so great. She’s so good and I felt so lucky when Rodrigo told me we had her. She brings a really nice quality to the dynamic of our relationship, because she is so kind of grounded and real, and Lucy is an uptight perfectionist. I really like their dynamic. It’s different from the dynamic with my mom, but I really like it.

How has it been for you on Broadway (in the play “Race”), and how that may affect you in moving forward as an actress?

It’s been great … You know when a couples’ therapist says to a couple, “Go on vacation and remember why you fell in love with each other”? I feel that way about my acting because I fell in love with acting on the stage. Because it’s been so long since I’ve done a play, it’s almost like I forgot my first love. It’s been really nice to meet my lover and fall in love again. It’s great. It’s really, really great.

Read the rest of this entry »

The secret to Kerry Washington’s cozy camaraderie with her mom, Valerie?

“I hired this really beautiful woman to pretend to be my mother. She’s actually an actress,” Washington cracks.

Her mom retorts that her daughter “was coached to say all these really nice things.”

In reality, the two have a warm, supportive and bantering dynamic. They walk into Alice’s Tea Cup holding hands before settling in for afternoon libations.

Washington is appearing in the Broadway play Race while promoting her drama Mother and Child, in theaters. It’s an intimate look at three maternal relationships; Washington plays Lucy, a perfectionist who is eager to adopt because she’s unable to conceive. Her movie mom is more critical than supportive. Washington’s real-life mother, Valerie, a retired education professor and schoolteacher, inspired her performance, but in an unexpected way.

“Their relationship is really different from ours. There’s a little more tension and pressure in their relationship,” says Kerry Washington, 33. “I did have to ask my mom questions, because she spent a couple of years trying to conceive me.”

What was Kerry like as a kid, growing up in the Bronx?

“She was never difficult. Challenging, yes. She had a mind and mouth of her own. Always eager to let you know what she thought,” says Valerie, 70. “When she was 7, she decided she wanted to fly by herself, to be on a plane by herself. She had a cousin in Boston, so we arranged for her to fly to Boston for the weekend.”

Adds Kerry: “It’s when I started talking that I became difficult.”

When Kerry first thought about becoming an actress while studying theater at George Washington University in D.C., her mom told her instead to be a lawyer for actors, urging her to find a career more stable than drama.

Today, she’s proud of her daughter and is “awestruck” when she’s at one of her premieres. She is on edge when she sees her daughter on screen in perilous situations.

“I was sitting next to my mother at the premiere of The Last King of Scotland, and she was hyperventilating. I’m like, ‘I’m right here! No one has chopped me up. I’m right here,’ ” Kerry says.

Mom says she’s “getting better” about being at ease on Kerry’s turf.

“It’s just wonderful to see how she has evolved in this world and how she can handle this world,” she says. “And yet she can be the kid who comes home for Thanksgiving dinner and fools around with her cousins.”

Retorts Kerry: “I’m faking it.”

Today, with Washington working in the same city as her parents, she spends more time with Mom. They vacation together in upstate New York, where they each own a house on a lake.

“That time at the lake, that is our sanctuary. All of the cousins, all of the cousins’ kids — everyone goes up. We hike and swim and watch movies. There’s no TV. There’s a DVD player. Everyone cooks together,” Kerry says.

Reveals Valerie, prompting laughter from her daughter: “When they hang out, they tread water. If you want a private chat with no one else around, go out and tread water.”

Adds Kerry: “Everyone in my family swims really well. The joke is that we’ll all swim way out into the lake and just sit there. We stay out there and tread water and chat.”

So does Valerie give her single daughter romantic advice?

Kerry sits up: “I’d love to hear this answer.”

Valerie remains relaxed: “I don’t think so.”

Kerry: “You don’t really tend to do that.”

Valerie: “Her dad’s favorite saying is, ‘As long as you like him, I’ll like him.’ ”

From USA Today

On Monday night, Kerry was photographed at the 2010 Costume Institute Gala in New York City and I have added 45 HQ and MQ photos of her at the event!

Just in time for Mother’s Day, the film Mother and Child debuts with a powerhouse trio of actresses — Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, and Kerry Washington — navigating a tangled web of maternal circumstances. Karen (Benning) regrets having given a child up for adoption; Elizabeth (Watts) is that child, now a grown-up; and Lucy (Washington), who can’t have kids, is desperately trying to adopt. Washington talks about her own interesting life choices — at least when it comes to choosing film roles.

Q: What appealed to you about this story? What it said about motherhood, adoption, families?

A: Actually, what appealed to me was the character and the challenge of playing this woman who goes through this incredible journey and evolution. These three women do that, and often in film you don’t get that as a woman — we usually get to be the person who holds hands with the person who has a journey.

Q: Your character, Lucy, is a bit of a control freak when we first meet her.

A: Yeah, when she’s talking to Cherry Jones’s character? We meet her at a time in her life where, up until now, pretty much everything has gone her way. She’s got the perfect little husband and the bakery and the pearls, and suddenly she’s faced with a situation she can’t control. So a lot of what I think the film is about is watching a person learn how to let go of control. We watch her surrender not by choice but because the rug gets pulled out from her. And the person we see at the end of the film has really learned to live life on life’s terms, in a wholly different way.

Q: Do you have control-freak tendencies in real life?

A: I think I have tendencies at different times. Not so much anymore. It’s probably a life journey for all of us, and part of being a human being, that we fall prey to thinking we’re in control. A lot of life is showing up and trying to participate and trying to live life proactively. But, at times, you do have to let go.

Q: If you chose this project because of the character, how do you choose your other films?

A: It depends — what mood I’m in, what’s going on, what’s available. I remember when I was doing The Last King of Scotland, and it was so emotionally draining, that I said I really, really want to do a a silly, fun comedy next. And that’s what led me to do [the Wayans brothers'] Little Man, which is the most fun I’ve ever had on a film set.

Q: How about Night Catches Us, which showed at Sundance this year?

A: Well, that has sexy Anthony Mackie from The Hurt Locker, so that was hard work! [Laughs] It’s about two people who were Black Panthers together, and the movie catches up with them ten years later. I love history, so I did that because I was really curious about different movements for change in this country. And I do look good in an Afro! [Laughs]

Q: What about The Details, which hasn’t come out yet?

A: That’s because it’s a director I really love, Jacob Estes, who did Mean Creek. Jacob is brilliant and wonderful, but I just came in and did a couple of scenes. It’s a really modern story about marriage, with Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks, and I play a friend of Tobey. I did that right before we went into rehearsals for the play Race.

Q: Has doing the play changed how you approach film roles in any way?

A: I feel like my acting is in a different place now. There’s an athleticism to doing theater, where you have to show up consistently in a different kind of way, so I feel like I’m in really good shape as an artist right now. I’m excited to see how working on film feels like now, with this experience under my belt.

Q: You’ve directed music videos — what about directing films?

A: I’d love to keep directing. I was offered a music video to direct last month, but, with the play being extended until June 13, it’s too much of a time commitment. Directing a film is something I’d love to do down the line — I’m really open — but I don’t think I have that clear of a career path in that section of my life. Not in any section of my life, right now. I think I’ve had periods of my life where I was more like Lucy, and now is not one of those times.

From Film Critic