From the Great White Way to the White House

While there won’t be a woman in the White House anytime in the near future, 24 took the reins and elected to cast two-time Tony Award winner Cherry Jones as its first female president, Allison Taylor, who is likely to have everything including terrorists, WMDs, and the kitchen sink thrown at her. And if there’s an actress up to the task of filling a pair of presidential pumps, it’s Jones, who took home her first Tony in 1995 for The Heiress, and won a second in 2005 for originating the role of the staunch, wildly suspicious nun who accuses the parish priest of pedophilia in Doubt.

Jones’s extensive stage work has earned her a reputation as one of the greatest actresses of our time, having turned in heavy-hitting performances in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika and in the 2000 revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten. But Jones, whose film forays include The Perfect Storm, Signs, and Ocean's Twelve, has also always been an out lesbian. In her 1995 Tony acceptance speech, Jones thanked her partner. A decade later, Jones made Tony Award history when her name was announced and she kissed her partner, actress Sarah Paulson, on live television.

The Advocate chatted with Jones just before the election. And while Barack Obama’s presidency had yet to be sealed and the fate of Prop. 8 had yet to be decided, Jones had some pretty prescient things to say about both. Plus, television’s prime-time president weighed in on Meryl Streep taking on the role she originated in the upcoming big-screen version of Doubt, what it will take to get a woman in the White House, and the possibility of her own marriage.

The Advocate: Hi, Cherry. Thanks so much for taking time to chat with us.
Cherry Jones: I’m about to go to a sort of sneak, family screening of the movie Doubt. If I sound harried, it’s because I got back to the apartment a little bit later than I thought I would.

Since you mentioned going to the film, I’d love to know what you think of Meryl Streep in the role for which you won a Tony.
It’s pretty exciting casting. I was smitten from the time I came to New York in 1978 and saw her Kate in Taming of the Shrew with Raul Julia, so from then on, I was hers. So…were there a few days when I fantasized about doing the film when I knew it was going to be made into a film? Of course. But, honestly, after doing it on stage 708 times, they probably did me a favor by not asking.

Seven hundred and eight times… That’s a heavy role to do day in and day out.
The bottom line is, I’ve always been very pragmatic in my career, which is very helpful and helps you negotiate just about anything. And people expect me to be bitter and angry, and fortunately, for whatever reason, that’s not my temperament.

Well, it does certainly help navigate Hollywood. Are you in L.A. or New York at the moment?
I have just arrived in New York.

Is that where you live?
That’s where I live. But I’ve been away from New York for the better part of two years because I did the tour of Doubt, and from working on the 24 that never ends.

Right. Well, that’s where I was headed. 24 is coming up and we have two big days coming up, namely Election Day and the prequel for 24, which premieres in late November. When your role as Allison Taylor was conceptualized a while ago now, do you think the idea was that Hillary Clinton would be the likely Democratic nominee?
I absolutely think that was probably what the boys in the smoking room thought. And also, they’ve had two black male presidents and at least three white male presidents, who were totally corrupt and terrible, so they were sort of running out of options. It was sort of a no-brainer that they would now -- even without a Hillary running for the Democratic nomination -- probably would have gone in this direction.