Wolf Hall actress rules Broadway stage as ill-fated queen Anne Boleyn
British actress Lydia Leonard's portrayal of the ill-fated Anne Boleyn is upstaging both Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in the Tudor play on Broadway
In the first hour of the Tudor stage epic Wolf Hall, Anne Boleyn makes exactly one appearance. "Don't you know who I am?" she snarks to the court of Henry VIII, then quickly disappears.
It's a question audiences may soon be asking too. The actress who utters the line is an unknown 33-year-old Isle of Wight native named Lydia Leonard - a presence so new to the US theatrical scene that until a few weeks ago she had never even seen a Broadway show, much less starred in one.
Yet on a stage that's swaggering with masculinity, Leonard distinguishes herself in several ways. Starring in a production that shares a name and storyline with - if not the deadly serious spirit of - a concurrent TV broadcast, Leonard blows in like a fresh gale, playing the ill-fated queen with equal parts manipulation and liberation.
"I didn't really know of Lydia before I cast her. I think I'd seen her in one small thing, as an Eastern European," said Wolf Hall's director, Jeremy Herrin, an Olivier-nominated British theatre veteran. "But I was quickly struck by her. She had this mix of cold intellectuality and a strong emotional sense you don't often find in the same actor."
Anne is strong and bold and often vicious, but I wanted to investigate her appeal to Henry … to see how clever and bright she is
Leonard's success underscores theatre's ability to mint new stars from seemingly out of nowhere, even as her decidedly modern style of gregariousness reminds us that actors on stage can be very different off stage.