Laurence Fishburne Talks THURGOOD

In a recent LA Times article, actor Laurence Fishburne talked about his one-man show "Thurgood" which will be playing the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood.

Thurgood Marshall became known nationally as a civil rights attorney who argued the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case and went on to become the first African American US Supreme Court justice.

"This cat, he was too important not to play," Fishburne said told the LA Times.

"It deals with a law which, whether we recognize it or not, plays a very, very important role in our lives," he said.

"Thurgood" will play the Geffen after successful runs on Broadway. Fishburne received the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards and played Marshall at the Kennedy Center in front of an audience including Marshall's widow and current US Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Gingsburg, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

"The portrayal's so alive you could claim with some justification that the great man spoke to you," the Washington Post's theater critic wrote of Fishburne's portrayal.

In order to transform into Thurgood Marshall, Fishburne studied the script and watched CBS film footage of Marshall. He found that his father and Marshall had similar speaking styles that were "easy for me to access," said Fishburne.

"There's a thing where he [Marshall] is talking to someone and he says, 'This young woman has no i-dea what she's doing here!' And it's exactly the way my father would say the word 'idea.' Exactly."

Fishburne claims that he wants to tour the show every few years, "because it's part of our history that is not going to be unimportant or lose its real value any time soon."

To read the full LA Times article, click here.

 

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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