Kara Young for the Win

Young will begin rehearsals for a star-studded Off-Broadway revival Whoopi Monologue over the past few weeks proveshe will be replaced by another theater stalwart, Adrienne Warren. But before that happens, the charismatic actor sat down Fashion Discusses career coincidences, on-screen rage, and growing up in Harlem.

Fashion: It took about two and a half weeks to find Claire, are you happy with where you ended up?

Kara Young: To be honest, I’m not happy with any of the process. I’m always looking to establish more history, nuance and humanity. Claire has been spending her time away from her family. She made huge financial sacrifices to ensure the family was taken care of. I will keep working hard until the last show, which is always the case. There can always be more. How do I honor someone in the five scenes that we have? How can we really make this person real in these few scenes and fill their life?

How do you let go of screen acting?

It’s really another thing to get over it. We had the premiere at BAM the other night, and there were people here who knew you and people who didn’t—mostly from the community, to some extent. It was a very hard thing to do, but at the same time, I remember the first time I saw the movie, I was watching it in the theater by myself, and I walked out and called my people and they were like, “What was it like leading a movie?” I said, “I have to be honest with you, I really don’t look at myself anymore because it’s about this story.“ It was so carefully and artistically integrated into Aleshea’s vision, every shot was done so intentionally, and the story took me on a journey. I forgot I was in this movie too.

Do you usually observe yourself more consciously?

must! But I don’t think I’ve ever had that experience either. I’ve directed movies and seen them in theaters, but I haven’t had this experience of adapting a play into a movie. I understood the journey a little differently than I did watching the show at Soho Rep in 2018 and being completely blown away by the performances and stories. The journey of it and understanding the weight and importance of this cult show that Aleshea gave us, that has been produced all over the world and now it’s like in the vault…that’s something beyond me. Like, my performance doesn’t matter at all, you know what I mean?

What does this story mean to you? There’s a lot of mythology about it, and it starts off like Odyssey Sort of, but that’s not the case. It defies all expectations.

To me, this story is about two young women navigating their own worlds as survivors, as resilient people who grew up in the foster care system and suffered a traumatic fire in the place where their mother died. That’s all they know. They make their world as happy as possible, and they’re great together. Obviously, the world sees them very differently, but we all exist together. We got a letter saying that our mom was actually dying and we were going to visit her, so it was almost like a journey to learn more about ourselves. When we met our mother, she told us that our father tried to kill us and that her dying wish was that we kill him. This is about cutting off the source of pain. God? is the most epic Southern Greek Odyssey road trip spiritual sisterhood. It’s about getting to the root of who we are and cutting it off.