The Emmy- and Tony-award winning icon takes her turn in tick, tick . . . BOOM!
For Emmy- and Tony-award winning icon, actor, producer — and LGBTQIA+ and human rights advocate — Judith Light, appearing in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s musical tick, tick . . . BOOM! signals a return to her first love: the theater. The New Jersey native made her professional debut at the California Shakespeare Festival in 1970, and she appeared in two Broadway productions in the 70s before moving into the television work that ultimately made her a household name — first on the soap opera One Life to Live and then most famously as Angela Bower on Who’s The Boss?
In the past decade, Light bounded back onstage in a big way, with three Tony nominations and two consecutive wins in 2012 and 2013 for her turns in Other Desert Cities and The Assembled Parties. But it was likely her two-time Emmy-nominated performance as tough but tender matriarch Shelly Pfefferman in Transparent that made Miranda think of her to play elusive agent Rosa Stevens in tick, tick . . . BOOM!
Rosa Stevens (Judith Light) in tick, tick . . . BOOM!
Based on Larson’s real-life agent Flora Roberts, it is Light’s character who gives Jonathan (Andrew Garfield) invaluable advice on how to move forward with his career. “She was a sharp-shooter, no-nonsense, really tough, with devotion and dedication to her artists and the people that she was supporting,” Light said of Roberts to The Queer Review at the New York premiere of tick, tick . . . BOOM! “She wanted to make sure that any of her people who were really talented got the straight story from her.” And thanks to her singular talent for effortlessly balancing comedy and tragedy, Light delivers the message of Larson’s story like a clarion call to artists everywhere in the movie’s closing minutes.