Ella Rubin: Exclusive Portraits

By:

Elissa Anderson

November 14, 2019 2:48PM EST

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Ella Rubin for Hollywood Life

Ella Rubin for Hollywood Life — Actress Ella Rubin visited HollywoodLife.com to discuss her Broadway debut role as Rosa in the revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo. One of Williams’ only comedies, it tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has allowed herself to withdraw from the world after her husband’s death, and expects her daughter to do the same. Originally published in 1951, the 2019 revival stars Marisa Tomei as Serafina Delle Rose while Ella Rubin makes her Broadway debut as Serafina’s young, brilliant and impressionable daughter Rosa.

Click through the gallery to see EXCLUSIVE images from Ella Rubin’s visit to HollywoodLife.

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On Getting The Role Of Rose

On Getting The Role Of Rose — “I wish I had a more exciting story for how I got the role, but honestly my agent just sent me the email with the script and the sides and the character description of Rosa. I remember the second that the email popped up on my phone and I saw that it was a Tennessee Williams play, and that I got to play a girl that was actually a teenager. My heart just skipped a beat. I think I knew from that moment that I needed to do everything in my power to get the role.”

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On Balancing High School & Broadway

On Balancing High School & Broadway — “I’m a senior in high school right now. I’ll get home from a performance and it’s 11:30 or so and I’m just like, ‘Oh, okay. I just cried my eyes out, I think I’m going to take a breather.’ And my parents are like, ‘Yes, you should totally relax, but it is on you whether or not you got all your other stuff done.’ It’s a lot, but my parent’s support is just key in any success.”

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On Getting Into The Character Of Rosa

On Getting Into The Character Of Rosa — “I will say it changes every night because I may say a word differently and it informs the rest of that sentence, which informs the rest of the scene for me. So I first started by making a Venn diagram because I begin the show as 12 year old Rosa. And then a few minutes later I am 15 year old Rosa. So I’ve really wanted the dichotomy between those two ages to be palpably different, in both the physicality, the voice and her energy. I think breaking down her psychology was really important for me and I did that by journaling as her. So, I would try to get into character and then take my journal and whatever scene I was thinking about right as her, after I left that scene like, ‘Oh my God, I just got into this fight with my mother and this is how I feel.'”

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On Rosa’s ‘Rebellious’ Ways

On Rosa’s ‘Rebellious’ Ways — “I think it is a very hard thing to lose your father at any age, and I think because she was 12 that was a traumatic experience, but I also think what trumped that was her mother’s response to it. that she had to sort of take on this mother role, really allowed her to grow resentment for her mother because she never really got to do the kid things that she was doing when she was 12 for much longer. There was still all those other ages when she could have developed into this woman. But to me it was sort of this restriction of being a child. I think it was the fact that she never got to do those little rebellions that all kids do, it festered into this big thing, which is marriage and a child and leaving home.”

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On Rosa’s Relationship With Jack

On Rosa’s Relationship With Jack — “Jack has a special place in my heart, but I think she could have felt the way she feels about Jack, about many guys. It was the reciprocation that really sent her into this love, she’d like to think she has. That the moment that she saw him, obviously she felt a connection. So, I do think that there was this gravitational pull, but at the same time, she was looking for, subconsciously for something, for anything to grasp on to.”

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On Rosa’s Sexual Freedom

On Rosa’s Sexual Freedom — “For women it would make sense to pick up on it because we all feel shame from a very young age about our sexuality because no one talks about it. So, it’s a very confusing thing to be young and feeling any sexual feeling because you don’t know if it’s normal. It is this special quality that she holds because when she was 12 and her parents were married, they had a very openly sexual relationship in front of her. and I think it was a culmination of her early upbringing and the way she feels power and her intelligence allows her to realize how she can mold that for her own good.”

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On Working With Marisa Tomei

On Working With Marisa Tomei — “I learn so much all the time. I feel like she’s really helped me ground myself in certain scenes and it’s something I hadn’t thought about much and it’s been really, really, really special.”

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On Adapting A Southern Twang & Sicilian Accent

On Adapting A Southern Twang & Sicilian Accent — “It was up to me to practice vacillating between the two really, really rapidly. At first I couldn’t get my mouth around it, but I started training my mouth to be able to switch back and forth, like a muscle. But also, she speaks Sicilian in some moments for a reason — usually when Jack is not around or when she’s trying to be this American assimilated girl. So it was definitely training my mouth and realizing the why in it.”

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