Video: Amy Ryan Talks Preparing for DOUBT: A PARABLE on TODAY WITH HODA & JENNA

Amy Ryan, who is currently playing the role of Sister Aloysius in the Broadway production of Doubt, visited TODAY with Hoda and Jenna on Tuesday.

The play, which was originally produced on Broadway in 2005, centers on a celebrated Catholic priest who is accused of sexual misconduct by Sister Aloysius, the principal of the school.

Originally, the role was to be played by Tyne Daly in the production. But, after Daly had to bow out of the show, Amy Ryan was called with only a week's notice.

Ryan recalls when she got the phone call, thinking "Oh, I have to do this."

Ryan likened her preparation to an old-school exam, saying "I got up a 5:30 in the morning...and just started cramming."

"The first performance, I had a little bit of a trick. I had the books onstage with me. I figured out to turn the page when the other person is talking so no one can really see you work with the script," she explained.

In the interview, Ryan also goes on to discuss another current role in the Apple TV+ detective drama Sugar. She plays the character of Melanie Mackintosh alongisde Colin Farrell as the detective John Sugar.

Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award®-winning Best Play, returns to Broadway for the first time in nearly two decades. “An inspired study in moral uncertainty” (The New York Times), this modern classic stars Tony Award winners Amy Ryan and Liev Schreiber in a staggering new Roundabout production directed by Scott Ellis. Sister Aloysius, the principal of a Catholic school in a working-class part of the Bronx, is feared by students and colleagues alike. But when she suspects nefarious relations between the charismatic priest Father Flynn and a student, she’s forced to wrestle with what’s fact, what’s fiction, and how much she’ll risk to expose the difference—all the while wrestling with her own bone-deep doubts.

The production is currently running through April 21, 2024 at the Todd Haimes Theatre.