Juliet Rylance returns to the stage in RSC's Othello after 10 years away
Juliet Rylance must be getting déjà vu. In 2009, the acclaimed actor starred as Desdemona opposite John Douglas Thompson’s Othello in New York. Now, 15 years later, Rylance is in rehearsals to do exactly that again – except, this time, she and Thompson will be performing Shakespeare’s tragedy on this side of the Atlantic, in Tim Carroll’s staging for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which opens in early October.
“I have returned to a couple of characters in my life so far,” the 45-year-old star says. “When you first encounter them, it’s like discovering a new friend. When you return to them later in life, it’s like meeting an old friend you haven’t seen for years. Returning to Desdemona is like getting back in touch with someone I know very well.
“I am 15 years older than I was when I first played the part, though” Rylance continues. “Rather than ignore that or play against that, we have decided to embrace it and home in on why it is interesting. So, my Desdemona is 15 years older, too, and so is John’s Othello. That raises all sorts of fascinating questions. Falling in love has a different weight when you are older. Everything feels much more precious and real.”
The violent and tragic trajectory of Othello and Desdemona’s story – spoiler alert, Iago’s machinations lead Othello to suspect Desdemona of adultery, and he murders her – requires the actors playing both parts to trust each other entirely, Rylance says. Fortunately, because she and Thompson have done this before, they do.
“I have a huge amount of trust in John,” Rylance says. “I trust him implicitly. I adore working with him. He has such a natural affinity with Shakespeare. He has played this role so many times in so many productions. Watching him grow into it is like poetry.”
Whispering in the ear of Thompson’s Othello will be Will Keen’s Iago. It is a role that the 54-year-old actor – so familiar as a schemer in roles such as Father MacPhail in the television adaptation of His Dark Materials and Vladimir Putin in Peter Morgan’s play Patriots – seems born to play. He, too, is a thrilling performer to watch in the rehearsal room, says Rylance.
“We have just come out of rehearsals, where Will was doing his first soliloquy,” she says. “It was beautiful to watch. He is so detailed. He has such incredible expertise with language. He speaks like his thoughts are coming to him in that moment. His Iago is starting to emerge, and it is really exciting to see. I don’t think I have seen an Iago like it.”
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One might think that Rylance – born in London in 1979 – was always destined to become an actor. She is, after all, the daughter of the composer Claire van Kampen and stepdaughter of the legendary Mark Rylance, whose surname she adopted.
“I did grow up in rehearsal rooms, watching my parents work, and I have always loved being part of the theatrical world, but I was not always set on being an actor myself, actually,” Rylance says. “My biological father is an architect. His world was all about space and beauty, and for a long time I thought I wanted to be an artist of some kind.
“I even went to art school for a while, before I went to drama school,” she continues. “Acting kept drawing me back in, though. I think there’s a natural process in which you rebel a bit against what your family does, but eventually you are sucked back in by it.”
Rylance quietly auditioned for drama school while she was studying at the Central School of Art and Design, then dropped out when she was accepted into RADA.
“I knew it was the right decision straightaway,” she says. “It just felt natural. I still paint in my spare time, though. It is a nice foil to acting. It uses different parts of the body and the imagination. Maybe one day I will start sharing my paintings with other people.”
Shortly after graduating, Rylance formed a theatre company, Theatre of Memory, with the actor David Sturzaker and director Tamara Harvey. Nearly two decades later, and Harvey is now co-artistic director of the RSC, so this show is something of a reunion.
“How would I describe Tamara?” says Rylance. “We go way back. We first collaborated when I was 19 at Shakespeare’s Globe. We found each other and decided to be friends. It feels really lovely to be part of her and Daniel Evans’ first season at the RSC all these years later. I think they are doing a magnificent job. I find them very inspiring.”
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Othello is the first time Rylance has performed with the RSC. In fact, it is her first stage role anywhere for over a decade. After working with Harvey and Theatre of Memory in the late 2000s, then moving to America to star in her first Othello, Rylance played Rosalind in As You Like It and Miranda in The Tempest in New York in 2010, then did a triple bill of Chekhov there in 2011 and 2012. She has not been seen on stage since.
“It has been a while since I did theatre,” Rylance admits. “I think I got to a point with theatre where it felt like I had completed everything I had always wanted to do. Shakespeare was my first love and Chekhov was my second. I had just done Shakespeare with Sam Mendes and Chekhov with this incredible company that included Ethan Hawke and my dear friend Joely Richardson. I felt like I had completed a journey with my theatre work, and I had started to get curious about television and film.”
Rylance went on to land regular roles in the television series The Knick, The Mystery of Matter, American Gothic, McMafia and Perry Mason. They kept her occupied for more than a decade, until the urge to take on a theatrical role recently took hold of her once again.
“I moved back to the UK in 2020 and I started feeling this real need to be on stage again, and in a rehearsal room again,” Rylance says. “I was longing to be part of a team putting something together again, and longing to share something with a live audience again. Being in this rehearsal room for Othello is lovely. It feels like coming home.”
Othello is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from October 11 until November 23. For more information visit rsc.org.uk/othello
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