Video: LaTanya Richardson Jackson Talks PURPOSE and Directing Husband Samuel L. Jackson in THE PIANO LESSON
The Tony nominee is currently appearing in the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play, now playing at the Hayes Theatre.
By: Josh Sharpe Apr. 08, 2025
LaTanya Richardson Jackson is back on Broadway in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Purpose, and the two-time Tony nominee recently visited Sherri to discuss her experience in the production.
During the interview, Jackson praised Jacobs-Jenkins, along with director Phylicia Rashad, whom she said helped make the show's preview process work even though they were constantly getting new lines to incorporate into the performance. Jackson plays the character of Claudine Jasper, the matriarch of the central family.
"She is married to this iconic civil rights person...and she's constantly trying to raise these two boys and keep a family together," she explained of the narrative. "She sustains the family while it's intact at home, while he builds the legacy for the country and, ultimately, the legacy for the family."
"You feel the audience [but] the issue is, we can't play into what the audience does. You have to stay on point and do the show," she said, adding that the energy of the audience does help propel the show. "Brandon [Jacobs-Jenkins] has written such an incredible and remarkable treatise on living that, once you get to the end, you're full."
Also in the interview, she recalled directing her husband, Samuel L. Jackson, in the 2022 revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, admitting to Sherri that he didn't always take her direction well. "Because he's so old, he thinks he knows everything," the actress said with a laugh. Watch the full interview now.
Jackson is a two-time Tony Award-nominated stage and screen actress, director and producer. Her onstage Broadway credits include “Lena Younger” in the 2014 revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (Tony nomination, Best Actress in a Play), as “Calpurnia” in Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird, and as “Bertha Holly” in the 2009 revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. She is currently appearing as Claudine Jasper in the new Broadway play Purpose.
For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning with itself, its faith and the legacies of Black political power and familial duty.
