Sharon D Clarke on becoming Lady Bracknell in 'The Importance of Being Earnest'

Sharon D Clarke has made a name for herself as one of the stage’s most versatile actors – from powerhouse vocals in Caroline, Or Change, to an award-winning performance in Death of a Salesman.

Sharon D Clarke is everywhere at the moment. On the small screen, she’s currently playing the first Black female lead detective in a British series in Ellis and is co-starring alongside Lennie James in the BBC adaptation of Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman, about a gay, Caribbean man who has been keeping his sexuality a secret for 50 years. Clarke is also appearing in the highly anticipated Wicked film alongside Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, and Jonathan Bailey — though she emphasises that she has a “very, very, very tiny part. Blink and you’ll miss me!”

We have met, however, to discuss three-time Olivier Award winner Clarke’s latest stage role as Lady Bracknell in Max Webster’s revival of Oscar Wilde’s ‘comedy of manners’ The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre. Another famous face in the cast is Ncuti Gatwa, the Sex Education star and 14th Doctor in Doctor Who, and Clarke warmly credits him for attracting new groups of theatregoers.

“With Ncuti playing Algernon, we have someone who is very much of the modern day,” she says. “He’ll be bringing with him a new generation who won’t be so au fait with the play. You want to have something in the show that they can relate to.”

Webster’s production is noteworthy for its multi-racial cast, which Clarke flags is unusual for period dramas, highlighting the hit Netflix show Bridgerton as an example of an American producer breaking the mould. “We have characters in a different skin, who are going to come at you in a different way, and hopefully make you see things in a different way. We’re creating a wonderful mashup of a London that, for me, represents the London that I grew up in.”

She continues: “We as a society and a culture have moved on. If people like Wilde and Shakespeare were around today, they’d be writing for where we are now.”

As for her approach to the redoubtable Lady Bracknell, mother of Jack Worthing’s love interest Gwendolen Fairfax, Clarke says she is deliberately pushing away portrayals that have come before her — no easy task when the play has been around for nearly 130 years and the role has been performed by a long line of famous actresses including Edith Evans, Judi Dench, and Maggie Smith.

“I’m trying to find her for myself,” she says. “We are doing it through today’s lens. You have someone like me playing Lady Bracknell, so she’s going to come with a whole host of differences that may not be recognisable to some people, but they are within her. It has been a joy to find and explore where she has come from.”

Clarke acknowledges that despite a glittering career — for which she feels “very, very lucky” — the industry still has a long way to go in platforming more diverse stories and giving Black actors greater opportunities.

Growing up, she recalls being surprised by an advert on TV, which showed a Black man brushing his teeth. “He’s not running from the police, he’s not on Crimewatch, he’s not working in McDonald’s. He’s just brushing his teeth, doing an ordinary act. We’d not seen Black people doing ordinary acts,” she explains.

The fact we are still talking about seeing ‘firsts’ for Black actors in 2024 is a source of frustration for Clarke. “To be here, at this stage in my career, where the young people who I’m passing the baton to are only just seeing things like Mr Loverman and Ellis on their television screens, and we talk about change and the leaps and bounds we’re making, those leaps are not so much leaps, they’re steps.” Alongside these new TV shows, which offer fresh perspectives, she plays the Prime Minister in the 2023 film adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s LGBT romance novel Red, White & Royal Blue.

Some of Clarke’s biggest stage roles are ones she — at least initially — never saw herself performing. She believed Arthur Miller’s seminal Death of a Salesman was “never in my reach”, but she went on to play the role of Linda Loman to critical acclaim in 2019, alongside Wendell Pierce. The show later transferred from London’s Young Vic to the West End and then Broadway, with Clarke picking up her third Olivier Award along the way. The opportunity to play the titular role in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, Or Change was also a welcome surprise, and led to her debut on Broadway, as the only British person in the cast of a prized American musical.

Clarke believes the role of Caroline Thibodeaux — a maid working for a Jewish family in Louisiana — has also been her most challenging. “The emotional rollercoaster she goes on, the fact that everything is so pent up within her and she has that fantastic 11 o’clock number ‘Lot’s Wife’ — I was cursing [composer] Jeanine [Tesori] because it’s a bugger to learn. There are so many time changes and genre changes. It stretched me vocally and as an actor. It was the gift that continued to give and give and give,” she says.

Clarke’s versatility as a performer has seen her cast in everything from soap operas (she was a series regular on Holby City for 16 years) and moving plays, to vocally demanding musicals and even pantos on the Hackney Empire stage (“Panto is sometimes not taken seriously, and I think that is so wrong. It’s a wonderful medium.”) After a number of hard-hitting roles, she is glad to be performing in Wilde’s comedy.

“I've had a phenomenal run, but a lot of my theatre has been quite angst-ridden, full of pain, crying, snot. It's been a bit heavy,” she says. “Being able to do something like this, which is on the lighter side and more frivolous, pink, and glorious — it's such a beautiful gear shift.”

The Importance of Being Earnest is at the National Theatre until 25 January 2025. Check back for tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Main image: Sharon D Clarke. (Photo: ByPip, makeup: Joy Adenuga, styling: Sarah-Rose Harrison)