The Shot | PlayMaker’s Repertory Company, Chapel Hill | January 7-12
Katharine Graham had a hell of a story. This month, that story will be told at PlayMaker’s Theatre in The Shot, a one-woman play by Robin Gerber starring Emmy-nominated actress and UNC-Chapel Hill alumna Sharon Lawrence.
Graham was once the most powerful woman in media: the former owner and publisher of the Washington Post, a role that she took on when her husband, a troubled, charismatic journalist named Phillip Graham, died by suicide in 1963. Phillip Graham had inherited the newspaper from his wife’s father, Eugene Meyer.
Under the tenure of Katharine Graham (who also went by “Kay”), the Post grew from a regional to a national paper. Crucially, she also oversaw the paper’s bold decision to publish the Pentagon Papers—documents revealing how the Lyndon B. Johnson administration had lied to the public about the origins of the Vietnam War—while facing active threats from the Nixon administration.
There are plenty of eerily salient themes in Graham’s story—freedom of the press, a Post at an inflection point with an oligarch now at the helm; the impact of women in power. One aspect of her story that has seen less attention, though—through biographies and, following her death in 2001, movies like The Post, starring Meryl Streep, is Graham’s marriage and the intimate partner violence that she experienced from her husband.
Lawrence is an alumna of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Ahead of The Shot’s run at PlayMakers Repertory Company, and on the heels of her off-Broadway run in Pen Pals, the INDY spoke with her about journalism, her path to the stage, and how she transforms into the beloved media mogul.
INDY: Did you have female media figures that you looked up to, growing up?
SHARON LAWRENCE: Absolutely. I had a unique perspective, because my father was at WRAL TV at the time which was a CBS affiliate, and he had been at an affiliate in Charlotte. I grew up watching people in my own life on screen in that capacity, so it didn’t seem like a bridge too far—it was attainable. By the time we got to Raleigh, which was in the mid to late 70s, they were about to hire the first female anchor that they had ever had—a woman named Bobbie Battista, who went on to be the first female anchor at the nascent CNN.
As fate would have it, my father was also an actor in local theaters, had gone to Northwestern to get his degree, and had done a lot on their college stage. That was part of my life, too, seeing him onstage and pursuing it as an avocation rather than a vocation. It was in my hardware because I did get his extrovert nature and my mother’s voice.
So I did it at Carolina, and that’s where I first had a chance to be in a professional environment because of the PlayMakers Rep. And that did shift me because, for the first time, I transformed into someone else. The magic of that, the collaborative energy, the loop, the feedback from a live audience—it’s something that, if you are attracted to and have an aptitude for, it’s very hard to resist.
When you first heard about the material—it must have been thrilling to have it integrate so many worlds.
When the woman who wrote the play first approached me, it was at a Women in Film event. I was very involved with Women in Film, the international organization that’s been around for 50 years now, advocating for women in the entertainment business, particularly in film.
I met a writer at one of our events who approached me and said that she had written a play about Katharine Graham, and asked if I knew who that was. Because I had studied journalism, I said, yes. We immediately had that understanding that this was a conversation worth having. She asked me to read her play. Women in Film taught me to say “yes” to women at every stage of their creative endeavors.
To readers who are new to her, how would you describe Katharine Graham?
She was a woman who was privileged in that she was born into both wealth and inherent intellect, but came from a background where her father was an immigrant and so she also understood being an outsider. She also understood the pressures of being a woman who had such drive—because she was born at a time, and so was her mother, at a time that frustrated, that drive.
Her leadership qualities that were obvious—not because she was seeking it, but because it was inherent in her—had to take a back seat to the mores and social constructs of the day, meaning marriage and motherhood, at a time when she had the capacity to be a leader of a media company. Her father, who owned the Post, would never have given a paper to a daughter. Her introvert nature made her an observer, and that, I think, was one of her superpowers. Her marriage was passionate and filled with love but also filled with struggle.
I’m curious to learn more about her marriage.
First and foremost, it’s important to know that it was certainly documented and very public—Phil Graham’s bipolar disorder. That’s where the crux of the challenge in the marriage comes from. He was a very charismatic man and they loved each other.
But that illness is so, so difficult to treat, and it changes people, and it makes people versions of themselves that are not within their control. So we look at that difficulty in his psychic makeup, as well as how that affected the woman who loved him the most and the woman that he loved the most. It’s documented that he had affairs. It’s documented that men in that time did hold on to power. Power over women was the norm. We are telling a story that is universal. A lot of it hasn’t changed.
How did you prepare for the role?
It was important to me to find the look for her, because I don’t look anything like her, I don’t sound anything like her, so I have to transform—and that’s why it’s fun for me to come back to PlayMakers, where I first transformed my physical look to play Electra in the Greeks, and now that’s what I do for Kay. I found a great vintage 70s shirtwaist dress that is very iconic for Kay when she was at the Post. I have a wig and my flat sort of Papa Gallo-type shoes—she was really tall, so she wore flats all the time.
And I put the helmet on of her hairstyle, which is pretty iconic. It was a helmet and she needed that armor. She needed that collar that gives the male suiting and a very sensible, easy-to-manage wardrobe that would allow her to still stay feminine, not even feminine. Just look at the way men expected a woman to look, but also the flexibility to move quickly in the world, because that’s what the media requires.
I spent time listening to her. Her accent is very interesting. It’s what they call a mid-Atlantic and there is no such thing as a mid-Atlantic place, but it’s a mix of what women like her—who grew up watching films with women like Katharine Hepburn [in them], who were taught to speak in a way that had an influence from Britain. There’s a formality to it that sounds almost ostentatious, but it’s not intended to be that way. It’s just how those women were influenced. And there’s a formality. And, I believe, a weight that makes you listen to them and understand they mean business.
The Washington Post is at another inflection point. We’re entering another Trump administration. I’m curious what you feel is the resonance of this performance in this very specific moment that we’re in right now.
Newspapers were so much more ubiquitous [then]. We’re losing them at such an alarming rate and that is because the media landscape has become not just polarized, but weaponized—which, they always have been, any kind of of media can be weaponized.
Yet what one would hope is that in this era, Kay’s era, the common person had a bit more media literacy. Their attention spans were greater. They had a choice to read and compare and to understand who the owner of the paper was really speaking for and about. Now we think we know, but what are the shadows at play? When moguls own these media companies, they are beholden in a way. Kay talks about the fact that it’s very difficult and frightening to stand up to the government. We talk about that because she did, and I just hope that the men who are in power of great media companies now are as brave, and courageous, and have the integrity that she did.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email sedwards@indyweek.com.