Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made history as the first member of the nation’s highest court to grace a Broadway stage. The jurist joined the Tony-nominated romantic comedy musical & Juliet on Saturday for a one-night-only walk-on appearance.
The production, which is a modern take on the Shakespearean tragedy in which the female protagonist survives and takes control of her life, announced Jackson’s performance several days in advance, writing on Instagram that she would also engage with the audience following the show.
& Juliet posted behind-the-scenes footage on social media of Jackson rehearsing songs and choreography, and getting dolled up and costumed before her curtain call. The clip also features the moment Jackson is brought onstage, at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre and met with thunderous applause.
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“I did it!” Jackson says at the end of the video. “I made it to Broadway.”
Jackson detailed her “unabashed love of theater,” in her 2024 memoir Lovely One. When remembering filling out her application to Harvard University, where she earned both her undergraduate and law degrees, she wrote “I wished to attend Harvard as I believed it might help me ‘to fulfill my fantasy of becoming the first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage.’”
While at the Ivy League school, Jackson performed in a production of Little Shop of Horrors and took a drama class where she was once a scene partner with Matt Damon, she told NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
Jackson’s Broadway debut, she explained in an CBS Mornings segment that aired Monday, was an opportunity to “remind people that justices are human beings.”
Her love of show business follows in the footsteps of the late justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who famously bonded over their adoration of opera. In 2016, an 83 year-old Ginsburg appeared her onstage in a one-night-only cameo in a Washington National Opera performance of The Daughter of the Regiment.
For Jackson, however, “I guess this moment reinforces for me that anything is possible,” she said.
“I didn’t let anything sort of hold me back or stop me, the obstacles that I would think are pretty obvious based on my background,” the justice continued.
In 2022, Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court after she was nominated by President Joe Biden. Two years later, her lifelong fantasy came true.
