Before The Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson Was A Theater Kid (With Matt Damon)
When you're nominated for a seat in the Supreme Court, it's expected that people will go rummaging through your past and dig out the most compromising information they can find. Still, the media may have gone too far by exposing something current nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson did in college that should have stayed between her, her conscience, and God: joining an improv comedy troupe.
There is no known footage of Jackson stretching a scene beyond humanly acceptable limits by deploying endless "Yes, ands," but we do have this footage of her 2016 performance on a CSPAN mock trial of Romeo & Juliet's Friar Laurence, the guy who came up with the brilliant "Hey, let's fake Juliet's death!" plan. Note that not only is Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito there, but regular judge Brett Kavanaugh happens to be sitting next to her (that's called "foreshadowing").
Don't Miss
Not only that, but, if Jackson is confirmed, she will become the first Supreme Court member who played a singing girl in a musical about an alien plant eating everyone, we're pretty sure. A review for her 1988 Harvard production of Little Shop of Horrors praised the protagonist (former Daily Show correspondent Mo Rocca) but Jackson herself is only mentioned to point out that her "rendition of the title song that is more yelled than sung."
But it's not all bad: the same review states that, like with most of the cast, the quality of her performance "fluctuates wildly" -- which implies there are good parts. We can imagine the director holding the student paper and going "Hell yeah, 'fluctuates wildly,' baby!" as the cast hoots and hollers.
While at Harvard, Jackson also took a drama class that once paired her up with another unknown actor called Matt Damon, later known as "Matt Damon, from the movies." When asked about his memories of being partnered with Jackson, Damon said there were none, but added: "That's so cool!" Anything to make it so Ben Affleck isn't his most notable acting partner anymore.
Regarding her dramatic abilities, it's been said that her performances ended with "literally people crying who watched her because she was so good" and "people dying with laughter when she did the humorous ones" by, uh, a guy she went to high school with. High praise indeed. Perhaps if the whole Supreme Court thing doesn't work out, Jackson will be kept in mind for the announced Little Shop of Horrors remake starring Taron Egerton and Scarlett Johansson -- or maybe even a revival of the bizarre '90s cartoon version where all the characters were turned into little kids (she can use a voice filter, like in South Park).
Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment on every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.
Top image: H2rty/Wikimedia Commons, nicolas genin/Wikimedia Commons
