Why Tony Nominee Corey Hawkins Embraced Fearlessness in ‘Topdog/Underdog’

variety.com:

Gordon Cox Theater Editor The recent Broadway revival of “Topdog/Underdog” may have ended its run, but for Corey Hawkins, the actor now nominated for a Tony Award for his role in the play, the experience left him with something that he’s still carrying forward into all his future work: “Fearlessness,” he said on the latest episode of Stagecraft, Variety‘s theater podcast. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: Hawkins (“In the Heights,” “Straight Outta Compton”), a nominee for best actor in a leading role in a play (alongside his co-star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the same category), explained why embracing fearlessness was a conscious choice for him as an actor — and recalled the theater performance that pushed him to seek out a role like Lincoln, the one he played in “Topdog/Underdog.” “I got to see ‘Jerusalem‘ in London, and I remember looking at Mark Rylance and then asking myself and asking friends: Why don’t we have that?

Why can’t we get up there and have the opportunity to use all of ourselves and play and take risks? Where are those roles for Black people?” he said. “And then I realized: Wait, those roles are absolute there. ‘Topdog/Underdog’ is one of them.

It’s up to us to take that risk, and we have to be fearless.” By the time Hawkins’ Tony nomination was announced, he’d already decamped to Atlanta to film the upcoming Netflix movie adaptation of “The Piano Lesson.” (That’s just one of his upcoming screen projects, alongside “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” this summer and “The Color Purple” due for release this Christmas.) But, he said, “I look back on ‘Topdog/Underdog’ fondly because I never had a role that challenged me quite as much as Lincoln.” On the new episode of Stagecraft, Hawkins