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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:31] Mo Brady: Developing a character based on a real person is a challenge for any actor, in part because whether or not the audience is familiar with that person, you want to make sure the role feels authentic to the people that actually know them. Such is the case with Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, where much of the ensemble takes on people in the life of the titular musical icon. One of those actors is Jessica Rush, who plays the featured role of Rhonda Graham. Rhonda has been friends with Tina Turner for more than 50 years, starting as the road manager for her and Ike Turner and becoming her own manager, best friend, and confidant. So how does Rush, a veteran of six Broadway musicals over the last decade, take half a century of life and turn it into a small but featured character? Here's our conversation.

[1:32] Mo Brady: Hi.

[1:34] Jessica Rush: Hi, Mo.

[1:37] Mo Brady: Will you introduce yourself and tell us what neighborhood of New York City you live in?

[1:40] Jessica Rush: Yes. My name is Jessica Rush, and I live in Inwood.

[1:43] Mo Brady: Okay. And your current job is?

[1:47] Jessica Rush: I currently play Rhonda Graham in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.

[1:49] Mo Brady: Who is Rhonda Graham?

[1:49] Jessica Rush: Rhonda Graham is a real person, eh? She was a fan of Ike and Tina's in the 60s, who, you know, would follow them and see them perform, and eventually met them and became their manager, their road manager in the 60s, and through life has always been with Tina, is Tina's best friend, and was actually made of honor at her wedding to Erwin Bach, her current husband. She was the manager for Tina for a very, very long time. She's also a photographer. My first entrance is a little messy because we see her coming out of a room with Ike, and he's zipping up his pants and says, well, she got the job. I would like to believe that what I'm, the look on my face is one of horror because that's what it's supposed to be.

And then he introduces her as the manager, that he's decided this is her, she's going to be the road manager. And you see over the course of the show, me holding the baby, me saying to Tina, maybe we got to get out of here. You see a friendship form, as well as still being the manager. And Rhonda is someone who is with Tina for the bulk of her career. I say in the show to her, you know, she says, why are you here? And I say, for you. And I say, when you go, I go.

[3:05] Mo Brady: My quick internet research is they have a very tight relationship.

[3:09] Jessica Rush: They do.

[3:11] Mo Brady: At one point, they live together.

[3:12] Jessica Rush: They did. They live together. They call each other sisters. I mean, they are, I read, there's I, Tina, and there's Tina: A Love Story, which is her most recent book. And also, we had access to the interviews that Katori used to write our show. They literally like, I hope it's okay that I'm telling this. They literally flew them across these files across from London, would not let anyone, you had to go to a space and listen with your headphones, and then they took them back. Like they weren't going to trust them to anyone.

[3:45] Mo Brady: Interesting.

[3:46] Jessica Rush: They're super...

[3:47] Mo Brady: Protected.

[3:47] Jessica Rush: Protected. Yes, exactly. Because there's a lot of information there. But what I learned, and these are things I think that are common knowledge, but they did live together. Rhonda says that Tina's mother called her her other daughter. So they were super close. And I think that anytime you're in a situation that is dangerous, or that is unhealthy, at least with women, what I found is we bond together to try to get through it. You know, it's like, well, if we can't get out, we're gonna do it together. In a lot of ways, at least in the musical, The Love Story is between Tina and Rhonda. That's how I walked out of the theater.

[4:25] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[4:26] Jessica Rush: You know, when you think about a love song, it's open arms.

[4:29] Mo Brady: Right. No.

[4:30] Jessica Rush: It's you standing behind Adrian and putting your arms around her.

[4:33] Mo Brady: Yeah, that's so true.

[4:34] Jessica Rush: Their relationship has lasted for over half a century. So then we get to distill all of this into a two and a half hour bio musical.

[4:43] Mo Brady: Yes. Yes.

[4:45] Mo Brady: Okay. What was your first moment with Tina: The Musical?

[4:48] Jessica Rush: Well, I actually have an interesting story, which is...

[4:52] Mo Brady: Podcasts love interesting stories. So this is good.

[4:55] Jessica Rush: When September of 2018, so a year ago this past September, my best friend was doing Aladdin in the West End, Michael James Scott. And I went to go see him. And Tina was running. Adrian was doing it. And I took myself to go. And I was sitting in the house watching. And when Francesca Jackson, who plays Rhonda in the West End Company, when she started singing Open Arms, I had this overwhelming sense. And I actually vocalized it to myself. I sort of whispered, I was like, that's my track. That's my track. Now, the irony here is at the time I was doing Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.

[5:31] Mo Brady: Right.

[5:31] Jessica Rush: And I was playing Joyce Bogart, who was also a manager of Donna Summer. So here I am watching one manager playing another. Michael always says that when we went to the bar that night, when I met him, he's like, you walked in the door. And the first thing you said was, I just saw my next gig. And funny story. They wouldn't see me for this show for months. Months. I guess there were some preconceived notions, or perhaps they were thinking they wanted to go a different direction. But I would ask my agent, you know, they got you have to get me in. I'm telling you, this is my job. I know it. And finally, in January, I was seen for it. And rest is history. I got the offer. And I was like, I told you. I told you it was my gig.

[6:14] Mo Brady: Was there any workshop or reading anything beforehand?

[6:17] Jessica Rush: Nope, nothing. We just jumped right in. Some people have had been hired last fall, like a year ago, and we didn't even start rehearsals to the end of August. So I got that offer in February.

[6:28] Mo Brady: When you auditioned, when you finally got the opportunity to go in for Tina, you had seen the show and you had seen someone else's interpretation. So you get to have kind of the little breakdown of what they're calling the character. You have whatever's in the sides, but you also have someone else's interpretation.

[6:43] Jessica Rush: Right, right.

[6:44] Mo Brady: How did all of those come together to make what you presented in that audition?

[6:50] Jessica Rush: I sort of had a very visceral feeling with regards to who she was. I had seen the show, like you said, and so I saw that there was a bond between the two of them, and there was a warmth there. I have to say, like, I trusted who I am as a person and what I've been told I bring to the table. And I think that I sort of just went with it. I love the song, you know, Open Arms. It's a song, I love singing it because it sits so nicely in my voice, to be honest. It's not hard. I'm not trying to belt an E or an F or anything. You know, it's just a really lovely song. And I think that what was interesting was when I auditioned, I auditioned and I sang the song, and then the music director, Nick Skelbeck, said to me, he's like, can you do it again?

He's like, can you sing around yourself? And I was like, around? He was like, yes, around yourself. And he's like, do you know what I mean? I was like, I'm sorry, I actually don't. I have no idea what you mean. I'm so sorry. I said, I don't though. And he's like, well, don't sing at her, sing around yourself. And so that made a little more sense. But with that song, you're conveying so much the love that you're trying to convey to Tina, and to help her know that she is not alone, because that is something she feels alone so often in our show, in our play at the beginning, when her mother and father walk out on her, and she's left with her grandmother, you know, her mother doesn't want her, she leaves and takes her sister.

And so little Anna Mae Bullock is alone quite often in her life. You know, it's tricky when business relationships become friendships become family. And if there is a moment when it breaks, or when someone needs to take the next step, you know, I think that was something with Rhonda, being able to see that Tina needs to go elsewhere. Like, I've taken her as far as I can take her. And in this new phase of life, she needs to go elsewhere. And so I think that that's what she's trying to convey to her in the song. And I just sort of trusted the material that was there.

[8:59] Jessica Rush: You take the breakdown, you take the notes you're getting in the audition and the callback, you take the secretive headphones, stories that are being shared with you flown over on a plane from London, you take your experience seeing someone else play the role and let anything else kind of... I mean the biographies, you know, Tina's books, the I, Tina and the Tina Love Story. So that's what I've used to try to create as much of Rhonda as I can, you know. I mean I don't get a lot of time to do that in our show. There are actually even more scenes that we cut because, well things were cut and put back together in different ways because they were slightly redundant at times and our show was running long.

So there are definitely some things that were lost. There were a couple, I still have a couple solid laughs but I had a lot of funny moments actually. Like she's laying it out there and sticking it to them and those are the things I took to put together who Rhonda is, a more clear picture and it was so fruitful. I mean there was so much information. Even in the beginning when they would tour in the South, Rhonda had to travel separately because segregation and the time that they were living in and different promoters would speak with her differently or try to pull the wool over her eyes or cheat them out of the take-home that they were due. That's interesting. She's in a position of power maybe because she's white but she's also a woman in the 60s. She would have to protect Ike's feelings in terms of the promoters and if they were mad at him because if she let them know that I could upset them then it would set him off.

Ike was just so abusive and hot-headed. I mean I think everyone walked on eggshells. It sounds like there's a lot of information that you're distilling to very little. Deciding what matters when I approached the role and what I wanted to take with me. For instance, I learned that Ronnie and Craig are Tina's sons and then she had step-sons and at one point they were all living together with Rhonda but this was when they were with the Ikettes and they were traveling and the boys had their girlfriends. I say boys, they were children so you know how little boys will have like a crush or something. There were four boys and then there were the three Ikettes and Rhonda and Rhonda's boyfriend was Ronnie.

Ronnie loved Rhonda and so for instance in the open arm scene, Jarden Deshaun Milton who plays Ronnie, he comes over to get the bag from me as we're getting ready to send her off to England and he and I have like this tiny little moment where he's like thank you Miss Rhonda and it's just a really sweet moment that you know people can think of it as just a normal moment but for me underneath I know that he was my special one. He was my special boy so that's a nice little human moment that we've been able to put inside. I'm intrigued about working with an actor who has already played the role so you know Adrienne Warren walks in to Tina. She's done an entire rehearsal process and performed it for a long time and has probably ways that she is comfortable doing things.

Well it is really interesting because you know I've been a standby. I've been a cover. I've been you know and I know what it's like when you have to sort of fit in the box right. You know when you're an understudy in a standby you want to try to bring your own stuff to it but at the same time you got to hit the marks and you got to be you know the blocking needs to be the same the light you know. You have to help the show not miss a beat you know and your fellow actors you know there you have to be respectful of the fact that they have a show that they're doing and so you want to make sure you're not changing the blocking and doing all the things. With Adrienne it was really interesting because she actually had a lot of press and things she was doing when we first started rehearsal.

So I rehearsed with Kayla Davion a lot interesting in the beginning who was one of the understudies because in Kecky who was our two show she was still in London and there are changes to our show from London so things are slightly different. Our scene the the main open arm scene hasn't changed so I was rehearsing with Kayla which that's interesting because she hasn't seen Adrienne do it she doesn't know what she's doing. Philida the process was very organic. Philida is the director Philida Lloyd. The process was very organic. We started out by actioning. I didn't go to college so I had never done this before but you go through the script and on every line and when I say line I mean the sentences within the line like if there are three sentences that are creating one line of yours you act you put an action for every sentence that you say to strike to hit and there's actually like a book a dictionary of actions a thesaurus if you will but we sat down and did that and we and when Adrienne was there she did it with us.

She didn't sit there and I doubt she had memorized her actions from London you know but she sat there and went through and actioned her scenes again that were helpful and uh that that was helpful but also blocking wise Philida just sort of wanted to see what we did. She said here's the chair here's the door here you go yeah and then you just did it now that's lovely but also then when Adrienne then comes in she's doing in her own way doing what she's been doing at that point it was early enough that I wasn't tied to anything I mean I was able to adjust and and do what Adrienne had in her body because I'm also not looking I don't want Adrienne to have to change it all in her body her muscle memory like she did the show for a year yeah it was an interesting process because I had my ideas and my thoughts and then we just sort of helped them to fit in where the show was that Adrienne had in her body.

Have you met Rhonda? Funny enough I have not although I hear we've been in the same space rumor has it Rhonda was at opening as was Terry Britton and Roger Davies this is what we're hearing but none of us met them which I find really interesting when I I played Joyce Bogart last year and Joyce in summer in summer yes and Joyce is still very much alive and she I got a call one day from my stage manager saying JB's coming to the show and she wants to see you and she and I met and now she like follows me on Instagram and we chat and we do things so it was really interesting to find out that Rhonda had come and we didn't get to meet you know I really but it was busy it was super busy so I do think and definitely with Tina you know Tina had a stroke and Tina Irwin is very protective of Tina and and her time and her space and I think I have a feeling probably Roger and Terry and Rhonda were with Tina.

One last question yeah when Tina the Tina Turner musical becomes part of the musical theater canon and high schools and middle schools are doing Tina jr and someone out there is playing Rhonda Graham what's one thing you think they should know? Well first off what those listeners should know is that you just made me cry because I imagined it because it's like it's dream come true to get to originate something and I would want them to know Rhonda is a warm kind fiercely protective strong woman and friend and I think that that is what's very important to know because women friends are special and it's so often talked about that women backstab each other and are awful towards one another and I think to see this friendship that has lasted this long and has endured and one that has is really a sister is what's most important. I think that that if you use that to sort of infuse your take on Rhonda and your performance just remember that she's family.

[16:53] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Jessica Rush for sharing her stories with us this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. The Ensemblist is proud to be a part of Broadway Podcast Network. If you can't get enough of theater conversations directed into your earbuds from us there are more than 30 other great theater podcasts to listen to on the network. Check us all out at bpn.fm. Also, The Ensemblist has joined the world of Patreon. You can support the work we do here at The Ensemblist for as little as $5 a month. Check us out at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. If you feel like supporting The Ensemblist but don't have $5 a month to spare you can help us by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. You can also follow The Ensemblist on Instagram to see the latest posts from our website where we share the stories of talented artists working in theater ensembles on Broadway and across the country. Thanks for listening guys. Until next time.