Last week on this blog, Rafi Gavron broke down the pivotal father-son scene he has with Robert Downey Jr in McNEAL. This week, I talked to Brittany Bellizeare, and we analyzed her equally crucial scene with Downey: she plays a young New York Times journalist who arrives to interview Downey’s title character, who is newly en-Nobel-ed and is about to publish another novel.
“We spent a lot of time on the scene in rehearsal,”Bellizeare said. “It was a draining process. I was trying to discover who my character, Vanessa, was as a person. She goes into the interview intending to take McNeal down. But then she starts connecting with him.”
How so? “It begins when they discuss McNeal’s debut novel ‘Goldwater,’ and Vanessa realizes that his political and personal journeys are not quite what she expected. And as the scene unfolds she responds to how bitterly honest he is being. He’s partly fueled by alcohol – there's a reason alcohol is known as ‘liquid truth.’”
Bellizeare, who previously worked at LCT in the well-received women’s basketball play Flex, revealed some truths about her process. “I’m a serious researcher. For this role, I did a deep dive into what it means to be a journalist. And I asked Ayad” -- McNEAL’s author, Ayad Akhtar -- “if he happened to have devised plotlines for all McNeal’s books as he wrote the play. He had, and he graciously shared them with me.” Bellizeare added that she also researched the fiction McNeal mentions in her scene: books by Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, as well as the real-life canonical narrative McNeal cites about Ralph Waldo Emerson disinterring his wife’s body -- Bellizeare dug into someone else’s digging.
Bellizeare’s analytic bent derives in part from her background. Born in Philadelphia and raised eventually in New Jersey, she majored in math at Spelman College. A math-related summer work experience, however, which focused on game theory, made her realize that math, and its application to a possible career in finance, wasn’t for her.
She returned to Spelman, where she was appearing in school productions and minoring in theater. “I asked my drama teachers, ‘Do I have the potential to be successful as an actor?’ Both professors said yes.”
Returning to her crucial McNEAL scene, Bellizeare said that it may have been difficult in rehearsal but that “performing it is exhilarating. It pumps me up. And Robert is a dream to work with. I like it when he switches things up a little. When you’re doing theater it’s very easy to get comfortable, and with Robert the scene doesn’t stay static.”
Bellizeare values audience feedback. She signs programs and does selfies at the stage door. “People tell me that their experience is similar to my character’s: McNeal is more interesting than they thought at first. This isn’t a one-dimensional drama. It gives audiences some things to reflect on for days afterward.”
Brendan Lemon is a freelance journalist in New York.
