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10/11/2018 12:01 AMLinda Powell was anxious when it came time to tell her parents that she wanted to be an actor.
Her father is Colin Powell, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, national security advisor, and secretary of state, and her mother Alma was the chairperson of the foundation American Promise.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done at that point of my life to go to my parents and say this is what I wanted to do,” says Powell. “I thought there might be push-back, but they really surprised me. My father basically said, ‘I don’t know how to help you do that, but I want you to be happy.’ “
Those early days as an actor were a struggle for Powell and if her parents thought she might change her mind in time, “a decade into it they gave up,” she says, laughing.
Since then, Powell has performed a wide range of roles in film, television, and the stage. She’s starred on Broadway in Tony-nominated play revivals Wilder, Wilder, Wilder, On Golden Pond, and The Trip to Bountiful as well as many off-Broadway and regional theater productions. This summer at New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas, she played Portia in The Merchant of Venice, which she performed outdoors two years earlier in the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, Italy.
Powell returns to Long Wharf Theater for her fourth show there with The Roommate, which runs through Sunday, Nov. 4. Jen Silverman’s comedy is staged by Mike Donahue, who also directed Powell in The Moors when it played off-Broadway last year.
“Sharon is an Iowa housewife and an empty nester,” says Powell, describing her character in the play. “Her son has gone away and started his own life and her husband has left her. So she’s been kind of shut down, probably for a number of years, when the play opens. The journey of the play is her being exposed to new things by her roommate as she begins to open up reclaim her sense of self.”
It took Powell a bit of time to claim her sense of self, too, as she grew up in a dozen different places because of her father’s military career. The idea of being an actor, she says, first took root when she was 16 and saw Zoe Caldwell perform Medea.
“That kind of changed my world. I did school plays and children’s theater, but the seed of maybe I could actually do this for a living was planted then.”
For a long while she hesitated to fully commit to it.
At The College of William and Mary, she majored in English and minored in theater. “But I spent most of the time in the theater department. I loved it but I also felt I couldn’t allow myself a life as an actress. But there was a certain point when I had to decide, ‘Well, what are you going do next year?’” she recalls.
She thought of going to law school or pursuing journalism or trying to find a job somewhere, “but that would mean I am no longer acting and that was unacceptable,” she says. “I realized that I didn’t want to not do it. It’s a big leap to say it out loud—and even to yourself—‘I think I’m good enough. I’m willing to take a risk and step off the beaten path.’”
It was partly because of the inspiration of others that helped her decide.
“As an African-American kid, whenever I saw anyone brown on TV, it was like ‘Oh, look. They can do that. Can I imagine myself doing that too?’ It’s so important to see people who look like you in the media and so when I got to work with those people that I saw and admired—Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, Leslie Uggums—I had to pinch myself. When I did The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely and she took my hand as we bowed and smiled at me, I thought, ‘I cannot believe this is happening.’ James Earl Jones, too, who was part of everyone’s life growing up. He was so generous to me and I learned so much working with him [in On Golden Pond.] He’s an actor’s actor. I’ve never experienced being on stage with anyone and having the feeling of being so moment-to-moment as I did with him.”
Her attitude toward another pivotal figure is more complicated. In 1997 she appeared on The Cosby Show.
“Speaking of people we grew up watching and looking up to and being inspired by, I would definitely count [Bill Cosby] on that list. But I also know a lot of people, friends of mine, who had experiences with him so it was sad to see that mug shot. But I do feel that justice was done.”
Next up for Powell will be a role that her father would especially relish. In the final season of Netflix’ House of Cards, she plays the secretary of state.
“I have more access to that experience than most people,” she says. “I also had a small part on Manifest as an admiral and I just shot a film where I played a chief of staff to a senator. So it looks like I’m putting the family tree to good use.”
Frank Rizzo is a freelance journalist who lives in New Haven and New York City. He has been writing about theater and the arts in Connecticut for nearly 40 years.