Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fulfilled her longtime dream of performing on Broadway when she recently made a special one-night-only appearance in the very queer musical & Juliet.
On December 14, the Biden appointee — and the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court — took the stage at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in New York City in a walk-on role created specifically for her.
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“I think that it means that anything is possible,” Jackson said of the experience in a behind-the-scenes video posted to & Juliet’s social media feeds this week.
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The clip features footage of the Justice rehearsing for the show as well as performing with the cast onstage.
“I did it,” an elated Jackson says at the end of the clip, “I made it to Broadway!”
As Playbill notes, Jackson described herself in her recent memoir, Lovely One, as “a Miami girl from a modest background with an unabashed love of theatre.” She writes that in one of her application essays for Harvard, she “expressed that I wished to attend Harvard as I believed it might help me ‘to fulfill my fantasy of becoming the first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage.’”
Jackson fulfilled the first part of that very specific dream in 2022 when she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, a Bill Clinton appointee. Her appointment was itself the fulfillment of President Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to appoint the first Black woman ever to serve on the Court should a vacancy occur during his presidency.
In March 2022, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) released a report on Jackson’s record, concluding that “she will uphold and honor the principles of equal rights for all and continue Justice Breyer’s legacy as a pioneer of equality.” The following month, GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis called Jackson’s appointment “a critical step to ensure our hard-won progress is not reversed by those using the courts to fight outdated culture wars.”
As a member of SCOTUS’s three-woman liberal minority, Jackson appeared to side with plaintiffs earlier this month in United States v. Skrmetti when they argued that a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors violates the constitutional prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex.
During her one-night stint in & Juliet, Jackson appeared onstage alongside performer Michael Iván Carrier (they/he), whose nonbinary character May features prominently in the jukebox musical’s queer love triangle. In early 2023, nonbinary performer Justin David Sullivan, who originated the role on Broadway, withdrew from consideration for the Tony, citing the awards’ gendered acting categories.
Ahead of the December 14 performance, Jackson spoke about her Broadway debut on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
“Well, you know, I got a call, and someone said, ‘We heard that this was your lifelong dream,’” she explained. “They have invited me to do a special walk-on role that I’m told they wrote for me,” she said. “So, I’m very excited.”
She also recalled performing a scene with Matt Damon during her time at Harvard.
“We did the scene, and it was some play that didn’t have a whole lot of action like Waiting For Godot or something, where you’re just sitting on the stage,” she said. “But at the end, the professor said, ‘Oh, Ketanji, you were so good. Matt, we’ll talk.’”
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