Aya Cash attends the 79th annual Tony Awards Meet the Nominees press event at Sofitel New York in May in New York City.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Tony Award Productions
Once upon a time, Aya Cash was a San Francisco School of the Arts student back when it was on San Francisco State University’s campus.
“There was a lot of pretending I was a college student, getting caught smoking cigarettes,” the San Francisco native recalled. “We were a feral bunch.”
79th annual Tony Awards: Hosted by Pink. Broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall in New York at 5 p.m. June 7 on CBS and Paramount+.
Now she’s a Tony Award nominee — and for her Broadway debut, no less.
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The actor, best known for her roles in FX’s “You’re the Worst” and Prime Video’s “The Boys,” is starring in “Giant,” Mark Rosenblatt’s play about a real-life book review Roald Dahl wrote that was accused of being antisemitic. Her character, Jessie, works for Dahl’s publisher, and she has multiple reasons for wanting Dahl (played by John Lithgow) to walk back his statements. It’ll hurt his sales, and she’s Jewish herself.
Cash spoke to the Chronicle ahead of the Tony Awards ceremony, which will be broadcast live on CBS from Radio City Music Hall in New York on Sunday, June 7, about what she was doing when she found out about the nomination, what Broadway is like and how she parses the script’s knotty politics.
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This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
John Lithgow, from left, Aya Cash, Rachael Sterling and Elliot Levey in “Giant” on Broadway.
Courtesy of Joan Marcus
Q: In the lead-up to the Tony Award nominations announcement on May 5, did you allow yourself to hope?
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A: I decided that hope would be not the right move, so I preemptively mourned and was like, “It’s fine. Who cares?”
I decided from 8:45 to 9:30 (a.m.) I would go for a walk without my phone. My husband had his phone, but I was like, “You can’t look.” I said, “When we get back from the walk, you can look, and you can tell me what happened.” That way, it’s coming from someone I love, and I can cry and be hugged by my friends and feel sad.
When we got back from our walk, he said, “Aya, you’re a Tony nominee,” and I burst into tears.
Q: Now, with the nomination, does it feel like there’s a before and an after?
A: Yes. Before is where you imbue all the meaning, and after, I felt relief, which is an interesting thing to feel.
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I’m going to be very honest. It’s very strange to do a show during an award season, because you’re going to the theater every night, and you’re just doing your job, and then these things are happening — “So-and-so got nominated for this.” You’re going, “Wait, I want to just have my experience of just doing the show on Broadway, which is a huge win no matter what.”
I was scared that if somehow I didn’t get nominated, that it meant that I wasn’t good enough. Then, being nominated, I was like, “Oh, it doesn’t mean that. We’re all good enough without it.”
Courtesy of Johan Persson
Q: But you have to be on the other side to have that realization.
A: You have to get to the end of the yellow brick road to see that the wizard is not real, and you won’t believe anyone who tells you.
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I have friends who have won these awards and then had struggles getting jobs. Nothing is the thing that you make it to be that fills the hole.
Q: What’s special about being on Broadway?
A: Feeling the history that is in those walls.
We gossip for a few minutes before the show — me, (Lithgow), Elliot (Levey) and Rachael (Stirling) — in (Lithgow’s) dressing room right before we all go on, and there’s often a story or two. And (Lithgow) was talking about seeing Laurence Olivier, and I was like, “I just time-traveled to someone talking about seeing John Lithgow in the original production of ‘Giant.’”
Aya Cash, from left, John Lithgow, Elliott Levey and Rachael Stirling in “Giant.”
Courtesy of Joan Marcus
Q: I love your character’s arc in the show. How do you describe it?
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A: It’s a real dance of when things finally break. What are the moments before, where you think maybe things will break earlier, and then she has to put them back together? They start to crack, and she goes, “Nope, we can’t go there yet.”
Then (Roald) keeps poking and poking and poking until she finally just says, “OK, I’m going to risk it all.” But then she comes back in Act 2, (which) just shows how much is at stake for her. She stays in the room because she knows that’s the only way there’s any hope. If she can stick it out, maybe he won’t destroy her.
Q: What was rehearsal like?
A: I mean, I only had seven days of rehearsal in England because I was the only new person. So it was more like a put-in (a theater term for a replacement’s rehearsal in an already-complete show). I had to sort of fit into mostly what the blocking had been. So I came off-book. I had watched the Royal Court version on mute to learn my blocking.
John Lithgow, left, and Aya Cash attend the 79th annual Tony Awards Meet the Nominees press event at Sofitel New York in May in New York City.
Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for Tony Award Productions
A: Sometimes you have to lie about these things, and I don’t. John is somebody who likes to have a good time and wants people to feel good and comfortable. He’s not interested in being scary or intimidating.
Q: What was your own relationship in youth to Roald Dahl’s work?
A: I read “Wonka” and “Esio Trot” and “The Witches,” which is my favorite. I had no idea, until I read this script, (of) anything about the controversy at all.
Q: How do you deal with finding out about the dark side of a childhood hero?
A: Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty desensitized. There’s been so many outings in our culture.
At this point, I just feel like I can hold two truths, which is that he was an antisemite, and he was also an incredible author and gave much joy and hope to children. Both of those things are true.
Honestly, it’s a misunderstanding of hatred to rate someone as evil in the fairy tale sense of the word. If we don’t have the understanding that people still go home to their dogs and are nice to their kids and then go out and commit atrocities, we’re missing what is actually horrible in the world. How do you combat that without understanding it?
What I love about this play is that it also puts Dahl in context. You see his moments of empathy. You see his moments of love and kindness and that all those are true along with his bigotry.
Aya Cash, left, and John Lithgow in “Giant” on Broadway.
Courtesy of Joan Marcus
Q: Especially in his time, how many other white Westerners spoke so passionately on behalf of Palestinians?
A: There is a context to his bigotry. That doesn’t excuse bigotry.
(Israel) has always been really challenging to talk about, and yet the answer is not to not talk about it.
That’s been a great gift of the show: people having to sit through different ideas in long form and not be able to immediately talk back — although some people do in the audience.
A: In London, someone screamed at me while I was reading the review, “Where is the lie? Where is the lie?” And then I often have people scream on (my lines), “They have a rightful country to defend” or “I believe Israel has the right to exist.”
It’s just disappointing to me when people speak out. I understand the passion behind it, and I think that’s exciting. But it also tilts the scale. If you’re in an audience where a lot of people are screaming for one idea, you think that that’s what the play is saying.
Q: On a related note, I wonder what you make of the show’s ending, where Dahl’s bigotry suddenly goes deeper. Does that tilt the scales, making Dahl such an out-and-out baddie that we don’t have to consider both sides of the debate anymore?
A: There are two other questions that I would find helpful. In the play, we have seen that he is a contrarian, that he’s kind of a little punk. Does he believe what he’s saying at the end?
Then I would ask: Is it a cultural problem that once we define someone’s view, we also define the rest of them based on their view?