Video: Katie Holmes Shares OUR TOWN Pre-Show Rituals

Katie Holmes is shedding some light on how she maintains the rigorous eight-show-a-week Broadway schedule. Holmes, who is currently starring in Our Town at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, says she will often nap on a couch in the basement of the building.

"I get worried between shows," she shared on a recent visit to The Tonight Show. "The show could start and I wouldn't know!" As for pre-show rituals, the Our Town star frequents a Starbucks on Eighth Avenue where she grabs a drink before heading to the theater. "Every time I go in, they know me and I know them and they wish me a great show," she explains.

After arriving at the theater, she goes through her lines twice, having also reviewed her lines at home. "One time I didn't do it, and I was in the middle of the scene and I said the whole line except the last word. I couldn't remember it!" she recalled, adding that she then got flustered causing her to rush through her next lines. Watch the full interview here to find out more!

The new Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town directed by Tony Award-winner Kenny Leon, features 28 actors led by Emmy, Golden Globe & Screen Actors Guild Award-winner Jim Parsons as “Stage Manager”, Zoey Deutch as “Emily Webb”, Katie Holmes as “Mrs. Webb”, Obie & Audelco Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Billy Eugene Jones as “Dr. Gibbs”, Tony & Grammy Award-nominee Ephraim Sykes as “George Gibbs”, Tony & Drama Desk Award-nominee and Emmy-Award-winner Richard Thomas as “Mr. Webb”, Tony & Drama Desk-nominee Michelle Wilson as “Mrs. Gibbs”, 2021 Special Tony Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Julie Halston as “Mrs. Soames”, Donald Webber Jr. as “Simon Stimpson”, as well as Ephie Aardema, Heather Ayers, Willa Bost, Bobby Daye, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Doron JéPaul, Shyla Lefner, Anthony Michael Lopez, John McGinty, Bryonha Marie, Kevyn Morrow, Hagan Oliveras, Noah Pyzik, Sky Smith, Bill Timoney, Matthew Elijah Webb and Nimene Sierra Wureh.

The design team for Our Town includes scenic design by Tony Award-winner Beowulf Boritt (New York, New York; Act One,), costume design by Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Dede Ayite (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding; Topdog/Underdog), lighting design by Tony Award-nominee Allen Lee Hughes (Topdog/Underdog; A Soldier’s Play), sound design by Tony  Award-nominee Justin Ellington (Ohio State Murders; for colored girls…) and the dialect coach is Kate Wilson (The Shark is Broken, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window). 

Our Town, the timeless drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New  Hampshire, has become an American classic with universal appeal. Thornton Wilder’s most frequently performed play, Our Town appeared on Broadway in 1938 to wide acclaim, and won the Pulitzer Prize. From the very beginning, Our Town has been produced throughout the world. 

Our Town explores the relationship between two young Grover’s Corners neighbors, George  Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts of Our Town–growing up, adulthood, and death–is fully realized. Wilder offers a couple of chairs on a bare stage as the backdrop for an exploration of the universal human experience. The simple story of a love affair is constantly rediscovered because it asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death. In the final moments of the play,  the recently deceased Emily is granted the opportunity to revisit one day in her life, only to discover that she never fully appreciated all she possessed until she lost it. “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you,” she says as she takes her place among the dead.

Photo Credit: Todd Owyoung/NBC