It’s afternoon in early October, and Susan Kelechi Watson has just emerged from her dressing room in Lincoln Center. The actress is on a short break from rehearsal for a production of “The Blood Quilt,” which begins preview performances on Oct. 30.
“The Juilliard School is in front of me and Lincoln Center’s at my back,” says Watson, surveying her immediate surroundings. “This is probably as New York theater as it gets.”
A few hours later, the actress would head downtown to another hallowed hall of New York Off-Broadway, the Public Theater, where she’s currently starring in “Good Bones.” The production is the second staging of the newest play written by “Fat Ham” playwright and Pulitzer winner James Ijames, and celebrated its opening night earlier in the week.
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“Opening night was so electric,” says Watson. “We all just felt really good about where we got the play to. James was rewriting as we were doing the show, so it wasn’t set; it was in a way sort of a workshop,” she adds. “He was still finding [the story], and we were still finding our characters. Even into previews, so much had been changing nightly up until about the fifth last preview,” Watson continues. “Audiences have received it so well, and people are really enjoying this play and excited by it — and excited to converse about it afterwards.”
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Watson stars as Aisha, an ambitious woman who moves back to her childhood neighborhood with her husband, a chef who has familial wealth. The well-off couple are in the process of starting a family and renovating a historic home, with the help of a local contractor who takes pride in the neighborhood’s history and sense of community. When the contractor finds out that Aisha is working on a development project that would displace parts of the neighborhood, the pair clash on what “progress” really means.
“Good Bones” is directed by Saheem Ali, who also directed the Tony-nominated “Fat Ham” on Broadway in 2023, and “Merry Wives” for the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park series, which starred Watson.
“He’s one of those people where if they call me to ask me, I’m like, ‘sure — what are we doing?’” says Watson of her collaboration with Ali. “And the idea of gentrification for me is very intriguing, because I’ve lived through that in so many different cities that I’ve lived in,” she adds.
While the creative team behind the play made the project particularly appealing for Watson, she was also intrigued by how the story navigated the issue of gentrification, told through the perspective of an all-Black cast. “I’ve never spoken to it from a Black on Black perspective before. And that was very interesting to me. So it just had all the elements there, of something that I felt like was a new conversation,” she says.
In her next play, “The Blood Quilt,” Watson will star as one of four sisters who gather for an annual family reunion at their childhood home in Georgia, shortly after their mother’s passing.
“What I loved about doing them both [‘Good Bones’ and ‘The Blood Quilt’] is that they just were so different from the other,” says Watson. “You’re probably not going to catch me at any point in my career doing the same thing, or same type of character that I did the last time,” she adds. “And this felt like a real shift, and so to be able to do them both back to back like that — it’s dreamy.”
Watson recently wrapped the upcoming Shondaland miniseries “The Residence,” which will debut next year. “It’s a murder mystery comedy that takes place in the White House amongst the resident staff,” says Watson. “The ushers and the butlers and the engineers, housekeepers, all of that. So it’s not in the West Wing. It’s on the lower levels, and it’s fun.”
The ensemble cast also stars Uzo Aduba, Giancarlo Esposito, Randall Park and Isiah Whitlock Jr.
“It’s one of those things where I read the first 15 pages and I was like, yep! Sign me up,” says Watson.
Watson, whose major TV breakout role was starring in “This Is Us” as Beth Pearson — the wife of Sterling K. Brown’s character — adds that she’s intentional in how she’s choosing her projects moving forward.
“I kind of set pace for myself every year, and I go, ‘I would love to do X amount of films, a limited series, a play’ — I want to do all three all throughout my career,” says Watson, who’s originally from Brooklyn and studied acting in NYU’s Tisch MFA program.
“What I’d like to focus on next is film, but I’m always open to any of the three genres, because I do love them all,” she adds. “Which is how I ended up doing like two plays at the same time.”
And with that, Watson’s lunch break was over — and it was back to the stage for the rest of that afternoon’s rehearsal.