Interview: ENGLISH's Tala Ashe is the February 2025 Debut of the Month

Tala Ashe is currently making her Broadway debut in English by Sanaz Toossi. Ashe previously received a Best Actress Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance in English at the Atlantic Theater Company. For five years, Tala was a series regular on DC'S Legends of Tomorrow, starring as Zari Tomaz. Additional TV credits include Girls on the Bus for HBO Max, NBC's Smash and American Odyssey, and more. Her stage credits include Breaking the Story at Second Stage, Lunch Break at PlayCo, The Vagrant Trilogy at The Public Theater, The Profane at Playwrights Horizons, Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeare in the Park and more. 

BroadwayWorld spoke with Ashe about the emotions of opening night on Broadway, the rare experience of bringing the entire Off-Broadway cast and creative team to Broadway, how her connection to the character of Elham has deepened over time, and more.

Read the full interview and check out photography by BroadwayWorld's own Jennifer Broski below!

What stands out to you most from opening night on Broadway?

It was such an overwhelming night, to be honest. We had a little bit of a group meeting as a cast before we went out because there were so many things happening, and we looked each other in the eyes and we said, “We have to do the show, we have to do our show and keep our eye on the ball in terms of that.” So I think we did that. And I kept my head in the game of the show and of telling the story of Elham.

And then during the curtain call it all kind of came flying back, and I was really overwhelmed. I looked out into the audience for the first time and I saw my parents in the third or fourth row, and I was really overwhelmed with emotion. It was really moving to have them there to witness this moment that means so much to me that they’ve obviously been so essential in making happen.

How does it feel to have made the Broadway journey with the same cast members in the show’s Off-Broadway debut?

It’s so rare for all components of the show, not just the cast, but the creative team, to stay the same. So it really does feel like we have an advantage of intimacy, and depth, and history together, and we’re able to skip past that early step of getting to know each other, and I think it both serves the work in getting a deeper connection with the work, and also we just have a better time together! We’re able to fight, and make up, and laugh, and cry in a sort of familial sense that you wouldn’t necessarily do with someone you met six weeks ago.

How has it been to grow with your character, Elham, throughout this whole process, and how have you grown with the character?

I immediately felt connected to her from the first time I did a reading of English. I was just so floored that Sanaz Toossi had written a character that was very relatable to me, and also heightened, and needing things, and connected to a world that I feel like I have one foot in Iran, I have one foot in America, so that was sort of a profound revelation for me. And playing the role the first time, my memory of it was that it was incredibly joyful, and doing that Off-Broadway… I’d been doing a TV show for five years, so I also hadn’t been onstage for five years. Being back onstage and doing English coming out of the pandemic was a revelation, honestly, and I felt so grateful for it.

And now three years later, it feels like more than I could have ever asked for, in terms of coming back at all. But my relationship with Elham feels deeper, it feels heavier in certain ways, I think because of world events, and how I’ve grown, and what I’ve been through in the intervening years. So, I think I feel the depth of her struggle maybe a little more acutely than I did three years ago. And I would say the journey of the play costs me more now, than I think it did three years ago.

Do you have a favorite onstage moment, or most meaningful onstage moment?

There are two moments that are really, really fun for me, and it’s when she ultimately wins this Koosh ball game that they play, and I feel that in the depth of her soul. That’s such an elated moment for someone who’s been struggling throughout the play with the English language.

And then, I think the most revelatory moment both for me and for Elham in a meta way, is the final moments of the play, when she and the character of Marjan speak Persian on the stage. And that feels like this moment that’s just for us. And it is, in a way, and a lot of audience members come up and want to know what is being said. I think the point in some ways is to give the audience a taste of what we experience throughout the play, that kind of sense of alienation. And to look into Marjan’s eyes and be speaking our mother tongues for 30 seconds is so, so special.

What do you want to tell audience members who are planning to come and see English?