THE INDEPENDENT INTERVIEWS MARIA FRIEDMAN ON PLAYING A 16-YEAR-OLD AT 66: ‘I’M LOVING EVERY SECOND OF IT’

The veteran actor and director speaks to Louis Chilton at The Independent about her unique role in the acclaimed musical ‘Kimberly Akimbo’.

The thing is,” says Maria Friedman, “you carry it all with you. I am five years old, I’m 15, I’m 20, I’m 30. I am all those ages.”

In a very real sense, the actor, director, and theatre stalwart is in fact 66 – though can currently be seen on stage playing a16-year-old girl in the award-winning musical Kimberly Akimbo. “I think actors, particularly… that’s our equipment. It’s what we use,” Friedman tells me. “I don’t come with a laptop. I don’t come with a violin. I come with my life.”

We’re speaking over Zoom, with Friedman a few days into her run playing age-bent teen Kimberly Levaco at London’s Hampstead Theatre. In the play – a wry and lively modern musical – her character lives with a rare genetic condition that accelerates many signs of aging. To all intents and purposes, she’s a child trapped in the body of an older woman, staring down the barrel of a tragically short life expectancy. Friedman is, she says, “loving every second of it”.

When Kimberly Akimbo was staged on Broadway back in 2022, it was a runaway success, winning five Tony awards, including Best Musical. Signing on to the UK production was, says Friedman, a no-brainer. “There aren’t that many parts for women of my age, so when one comes along that’s like that, you don’t want to miss it,” she says. “It’s lovely to be the custodian of a story that seems very important these days, about kindness and living in the now... it’s what we always strive for, isn’t it, to be present? And Kimberly, because of whatever condition she has, has a real understanding of time, and that she has little of it.”

Click the link below to read the full interview