To Jurnee Smollett, acting isn’t just a job. It’s nourishing. It’s spiritual. It’s everything. Case in point: Smollett was recently in Australia filming “Escape From Spiderhead” for Netflix, a sci-fi film in which she acts opposite Chris Hemsworth. Unlike in many places in the U.S., theaters and restaurants are open in Australia, so Smollett could have socialized and gone sightseeing. Instead, she was alone inside her rented house, missing her son and doing a one-woman production of the play “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” a two-hander by John Patrick Shanley.
“I found myself in full tears,” Smollett exclaims, laughing. “Like, no one’s in this house, [and I’m] full-on talking about how what I did was really bad; I did a bad thing. Full-on fucking tears, man!”
—Read the rest of the cover story at Backstage. The interview was a divine 80 minutes. I hardly realized we were doing it over Zoom.
Diep Tran 