NEW YORK CITY—Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made her Broadway debut on Dec. 14, dancing to a Backstreet Boys song and advocating “female empowerment.”
Jackson’s relatively brief role came during a showing of “& Juliet” at Stephen Sondheim Theater in New York City. Following the show, she answered questions during an on-stage interview with CBS News host Gayle King.
Jackson, who received undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, told King that the opportunity to perform was “a dream come true.”
She also recounted how she included the prospect of a Broadway performance in her application to the Ivy League school. “I said in my application that I wanted to go there because I thought it would help me with my dream of being the first black female Supreme Court Justice to appear on a Broadway stage,” she told King.
A smiling Jackson took the stage with a light-green Shakespearean outfit in the beginning of the show before admonishing the narrative in the original “Romeo and Juliet.” In a scene from the titular Romeo Montague’s funeral, she plays one of his former love interests and states that he used to come to her balcony. An animated Jackson also stands on Romeo’s coffin while singing and dancing to a rendition of “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” by the Backstreet Boys.
The show contains parallel narratives of Juliet pursuing her life after the death of Romeo, and William Shakespeare, played by Drew Gehling, struggling with his wife to tell a version of the story in which Juliet continues her life after the lovers’ tragic relationship.
At the beginning of the show, Shakespeare describes how Juliet kills herself after seeing Romeo dead in the original play. Jackson responds that she’s “having a very strongly negative reaction ... like, I hate it.”
When Anne Hathaway, who plays Shakespeare’s wife, suggests an alternative ending in which Juliet doesn’t commit suicide because Romeo killed himself, Jackson exclaims, “Female empowerment!”
During their post-showing interview, King asked Jackson what her “next dreams” were.
“I think I just need to kind of focus on my day job a little,” Jackson said in response.
In September, Jackson released her memoir entitled “Lovely One.” She told King on Dec. 14 that she started writing the book after her confirmation “because I felt so much gratitude, and I knew that my success as a newly confirmed justice was not my own, but there were so many people who had poured into me.” She said that she wanted to “pay tribute” to those individuals.
King asked Jackson what she wanted others to take away from her performance that night. “I think that it means that anything is possible,” Jackson responded.
