NEW YORK — Laurence Fishburne has been taking risks since the age of 14, when he spent 18 months in the Philippines playing a young soldier in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.” Since then, he has won Tony, Drama Desk and Emmy awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination.
Fishburne’s latest challenge is “Thurgood,” his first one-man play, which opens today at the Booth Theatre on Broadway. The show runs until Aug. 3. For 90 minutes with no intermission, he fills the stage as the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black American to sit on the Supreme Court.
In a rehearsal hall off Times Square before the play entered previews, Fishburne, 46, was coolly confident and ready to test himself.
“So far, so good,” he said with a grin, before becoming serious. “I mean, it’s a huge challenge. It’s a huge piece, and I’m very excited because I feel like it’s going to help me to grow.”
He recounts Marshall’s life story through anecdotes and a heavy dose of humor. He takes the audience from his job waiting tables at a country club, through his advocacy during the civil rights movement, to his last day as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
The highlight is Marshall’s appearance before the Supreme Court as the NAACP’s lead counsel in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
The character is a departure for Fishburne. “He was a funny guy. He was hilarious,” the actor said of Marshall, who died in 1993. “And so, I get to use that side of myself and show a much lighter and more humorous side of myself in this role, because, you know, I’m not particularly known for being a funny guy.”
That, of course, is an understatement. Comedies are notably absent from Fishburne’s long list of movie credits.
He is best known for his savage performance as Ike Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which earned him the Oscar nod, and for his role as Morpheus, the steely action hero of the blockbuster “Matrix” trilogy.
In person, Fishburne leaves no doubt that he can command a stage.
It’s not just his physical size but also his intensity, which is only occasionally broken by a full-throated laugh that seems to shake the room.
He made it clear that he didn’t want to share details about his personal life, including his new baby, Delilah, who was born last June to actress Gina Torres. (Fishburne has an older son and daughter, Langston and Montana, from his first marriage.) He was more at ease talking about the man he has prepared to embody onstage.
Fishburne said he knew little about the Supreme Court justice before meeting with director Leonard Foglia to discuss the role.
“When I read it, I just thought the things that I learned about (Marshall’s) life and his work were to my mind so important, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do this.”
“People who don’t know Thurgood Marshall’s story will be really, really changed by it,” Fishburne said. “I mean, his work changed the way we live in America and the way we relate to each other in this country, particularly in the South.”
Fishburne has always made time to return to the stage between movies.
In 1992, he won Tony and Drama Desk awards, as well as an Outer Critic’s Circle Award and a Theater World Award for his performance as Sterling Johnson in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running.”
He returned to Broadway in 1999 to play King Henry II in James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter.” In 2006, he starred in California productions of Alfred Uhry’s “Without Walls” and August Wilson’s “Fences.”
Fishburne has also written and directed a play, “Riff Raff,” which he adapted into a 2000 movie, “Once in the Life.”
Foglia noted that some actors forget the skills needed to perform onstage after acting in movies, but Fishburne is not one of them.
“He has very wisely kept both muscles going, because they are very different muscles,” Foglia said.
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