Kara Young, already on a Broadway streak, could make Tony history with her role in 'Purpose'

NEW YORK (AP) — Don't bother asking Kara Young which one of her roles is her favorite. They're all her favorite.

“Every single time I’m doing a show, I feel like it is the most important thing on the planet,” she says. “I don't have a favorite. It’s like this: Every, every single project has held its own weight.”

Right now, the weighty project on her mind is Broadway's celebrated “Purpose,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ drawing-room drama at the Helen Hayes Theater about an accomplished Black family revealing its hypocrisy and fault lines during a snowed-in gathering.

“There’s so much in this play,” says Young, who plays an outsider who witnesses the implosion. “Like a lot of the great writers, he creates these universes in a line or the space between the words.”

A tense family gathering

“Purpose” is set in the Jasper family’s living room in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Chicago. The patriarch is Pastor Solomon Jasper, a Civil Rights legend, and his steely wife, Claudine.

They are reuniting with their two sons — Junior, a disgraced former state senator, recently released after serving a prison sentence for embezzling funds, and Naz, who fled divinity school and is now a nature photographer.

Young plays Aziza, a Harlem-bred social worker who has been close friends with Naz but didn't know anything about his family. “This kind of thing never happens to me! I never meet famous people and you’ve been famous this whole time?” she screams.

Her awe quickly fades as sibling jealousies, parental frustrations, past sins and the pressures of legacy come tumbling out over a fraught dinner. There is some slapping.

“We are so susceptible to get angry with the people we love the most,” says Young. “What we’re seeing in the less than 12 hours of them being together for the first time in two years, they’re sitting down and having dinner, and all of these things come up, as they often do.”

Young poised to make history

Young's work has earned her a Tony Award nomination and a chance to make history. Already the first Black person to be nominated four times consecutively, if she wins, she’ll be the first Black performer to win two Tonys in a row.

Young made her Broadway debut in 2021 in “Clyde’s,” was in “Cost of Living” the next year and co-starred opposite Leslie Odom Jr. in 2024's “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch,” winning a Tony.

Jacobs-Jenkins calls Aziz in his script a “deeply perceptive person and empathetic” and that could also apply to Young, She says she closely identifies with her character in “Purpose,” — they're both Harlem-bred advocates for others, hoping to make the planet better.

“I feel connected to that core of her,” says Young. “Every single play I've done since my 10-minute play festivals, I’m always like, ‘Wow, this feels like this can change the world,’ you know? And I feel like at the core of Aziza, that’s how she feels. She wants to change the world.”

“Purpose,” directed by Phylicia Rashad, also stars LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix, Jon Michael Hill, Alana Arenas and Glenn Davis.

‘Joy and curiosity and enthusiasm’

Hill, who as Naz also earned a Tony nomination for best lead male actor in a play, calls Young “the heart and joy of our little family over there at the Helen Hayes.”

“She enters the building and she just makes time for everyone and is genuinely excited to see people and hear about how they’re doing,” he says. “I’ve really never seen anyone have as much room in their consciousness and their being for everyone she encounters. She approaches every day with joy and curiosity and enthusiasm.”

If there's one story that shows who Young is, it would be from the day of the Met Gala, which she and cast members of "Purpose" were invited, along with its playwright. That same day, Jacobs-Jenkins won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Young found out while getting her makeup done and began screaming. When she got to the gala — a look-at-me moment, if there ever was one — she was a walking advertisement for the play. “I told everybody, ‘You have to come and see this play. He just won a Pulitzer!’”

Hill was right behind her and smiling as Young made connections and introductions. “She was just going up to everyone and introducing us and talking about our show and trying to get folks in the door.”

Young made her 2016 stage debut in Patricia Ione Lloyd’s play “Pretty Hunger” at the Public Theater, a play about a 7-year-old Black girl who didn't know she was Black. The playwright told her she wrote it with Young in mind.

“Ione Lloyd is one of the people who really made me see myself as an artist,” she says. “She’s the one that kind of set a path for me in a really beautiful way.”

Next up for Young is the movie “Is God Is,” which playwright Aleshea Harris is directing from her own 2018 stage play. Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox and Janelle Monáe are in the cast. Young calls it “a spaghetti Western-meets-Tarantino-meets-the Greeks.” Next summer on Broadway, she'll star in a revival of “The Whoopi Monologues” opposite Kerry Washington.

After that, who knows? “I don’t know what’s next, but I can’t wait, whatever that is,” she says. “If something comes along, it’s about jumping into the next thing. If there’s life in me, I got to live it.”

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