Q&A: John Douglas Thompson on playing Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Company

This fall, award-winning actor John Douglas Thompson, who the New York Times has called “perhaps the greatest Shakespeare interpreter in contemporary America theater,” is starring in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Othello. Thompson has acted in numerous stage and television productions, including on HBO in The Gilded Age (opposite Audra McDonald) and Mare of Easttown.

We recently spoke with Thompson about the play Othello, the character Othello, and the experience of playing the part at the RSC, in a conversation filled with fascinating insights—including the way that Shakespeare depicts Othello and Desdemona’s love match. When they meet in Cyprus, Thompson says, “their profession of love to each other is quite profound and the height of romantic poetry. You almost feel that they are the greatest lovers in Shakespeare. Period.” 

You have a storied career as a leading American actor in Shakespearean and classic roles and more contemporary parts, but this will be your first appearance at the Royal Shakespeare Company. What is it like to be working there? How does it feel?

It is actually quite wonderful. It’s been a dream of mine to work at the RSC from the moment I fell in love with Shakespeare. My roots are in this country as I was born in Bath, but left when I was two and a half years old. My family moved to Montreal, Canada, and then to Rochester, New York, in the United States. The odyssey that brought me to acting pointed me firmly in the direction of the classics and a strong desire to make it back across the pond to Shakespeare’s wellspring. So in a sense, my dream has led me full circle to play Othello. My experience with the RSC thus far has been amazingly challenging, beautiful, and dare I say, transformative. To be with this singular and most venerable organization at this point in my career means the world to me. It’s almost overwhelming. I feel at home and cared for within the loving arms of this institution.

You have played Othello before, including at Shakespeare & Company and in your award-winning Off-Broadway 2009 performance. When you return to the role in a different country, at a different cultural moment, and with a different production, what is still the same to you about Othello the character or Othello the play, and what is different? Do you come to the part in the same way or differently?

The play remains a very personal and mysterious adventure for me. Each moment in time of my maturity and evolution as well as the world’s, gives birth to new and interesting interpretations of the character and play. So in that sense I can’t help but come to it differently as the play demands a kind of “new authenticity “ each time you climb it. Add to that, a new group of actors, a distinct directorial and production concept, that will invoke a new experience with Othello for me. I don’t particularly concern myself with playing the role in a different country or at a different cultural moment as these plays speak to the constancy of humanity in all of us. Our capacity for love, friendship, betrayal, jealousy, pleasure, hate, joy, contradiction, etc., is not confined to a country or a cultural moment; they are constant and universal. The world has indeed changed but the human condition has not. The last time I did Othello was about 16 years ago. Since then, I’ve matured, I’ve evolved, and my thoughts and perceptions about these plays and characters have also matured and evolved. It is the opportunity to explore the known unknown that is the exciting prospect of this new journey with Othello.

In 2024, does the role of race and racism have a different impact than at another time, and if so, how does that affect how you play Othello?

I think race and racism are definitely a part of the play, which leads me even more squarely to the door of otherness. Let me speak plain, there is certainly antiblackness in Othello as there is antisemitism in Merchant of Venice. But I feel treating the play in terms of race and racism is quite binary. The play and the character belie that classification. More interesting to me in playing Othello is his otherness and how that manifests in him and the new culture and society he finds himself in. How we treat people who are different from ourselves, what makes us vulnerable, what makes us afraid, how do we assimilate into a new society, what barriers do we put up, who can we trust. The difficult negotiation of these and other issues will probably have the most bearing on how I approach and play Othello. I cannot think but these meditations were vastly important in Shakespeare’s day because we have the plays to prove it. And they remain constant issues to this very day. I’m constantly godsmacked by Shakespeare’s modernity.

Similarly, does the role of gender suggest a different approach than it might have in the past, and does that affect your character’s relationship with Desdemona or other characters?

Yeah, because I always thought that Othello’s relationship with Desdemona was quite transformative in that it wasn’t something based on patriarchy. Othello, as he says in the play, wants to be “free and bounteous to her (Desdemona’s) mind.” This is something he proclaims in front of the senate. There is a beauty in that statement that speaks to a deep love and willingness to be two equal halves of a whole. There was an equality that they sought and found in each other, and the ability to be their full selves with one another. Obviously some of that is contradicted, but the intentions of their love were intended to transcend the normal and common rules of love and marriage, from the start. The story of how they fell in love supports their transcendent nature. If you just take Desdemona alone as a singular character, you can see her progressiveness, her smart and conscious rebellion against the norms of that society. Desdemona is a beacon to the new woman and not hemmed in by what has come before. And Othello wants to be her match in every sense.

What do you like most about Othello? How do you feel that the play’s story connects with modern audiences? What is your favorite scene and why? What is your favorite line?

I think what is great is that there is something quite domestic about this play, which adds a realness and of course it’s quite provocative. I’ve always looked at this play as being one of the first black protagonists in theater and one of its most influential and iconic. It is foundational and elemental, and Othello or swaths of him show up in many other plays, movies, and television. It often haunts me with its poet warrior hero who speaks as if he were in constant discourse and counsel with the Gods. This is the role that pointed me in the direction of my body of work, so I will always be drawn to it.

One of my favorite moments in the play is when Othello tells the members of the Venetian senate how he and Desdemona fell in love. It starts with “Her father loved me, oft invited me, still questioned me the story of my life.” It’s an extravagant and beautiful tale of how they found and fell in love with each other. Another favorite moment of mine is when Desdemona and Othello meet up at Cyprus. Their profession of love to each other is quite profound and the height of romantic poetry, you almost feel that they are the greatest lovers in Shakespeare. Period.

And finally, when did you first encounter and connect with Shakespeare’s works?

I started off as an actor quite late, because I had a previous career. I was a salesman and I sold computers to the banking or financial industry. During that time, I met a young lady and asked her out on a date to go see a play. Something got mixed up, and the young lady didn’t show up, so I was stood up in a way, but I still decided to go to the play anyways, and I saw this amazing August Wilson play. I fell in love with the idea of being an actor right then and there. But it took another 6 1/2 years before I started my journey to become an actor.

My first encounter with Shakespeare was—I remember my mom would sometimes quote some speeches from Julius Caesar, which she had to learn for her English class in Jamaica, where my mom is from. When I decided to become an actor I had to audition for drama school (Trinity Rep Conservatory). I had to find a classical monologue and a contemporary monologue. I did not quite know what those were, because I came to acting quite late. The school director advised me to buy a Shakespeare classical monologue book, to find an audition piece. And as I was going through this monologue book (my second encounter with Shakespeare), I found a monologue from Julius Caesar that my mother had quoted some lines from (Mark Antony) so that’s what I chose as my audition piece, and it worked, I got in.

The program was two years and after I graduated I went to a place called Shakespeare & Company, founded by Tina Packer and Kristin Linklater to do some Shakespeare boot camp. After a few years of being an unemployed actor I finally started to get work and got cast in one Shakespeare play after another, and really enjoyed each experience. But it was the poetry that kept me at Shakespeare’s doorstep. So profound, so in tune with the best of our intellectual and emotional selves, and so capacious that it could always hold and speak to the spectrum of myself.