It seems Mrs. Doubtfire has legs, if of the gartered variety. And the coming stage adaptation also boasts some South Carolina talent. The eagle-eyed social worker Wanda Sellner will be performed by Kennedy V. Jackson, who was raised in Edgefield County in Trenton.
Jackson, 24, has already logged decades sharpening her vocal acumen.
“I was maybe 3 or 4, and we were at the gas station and my mom went to pump the gas and my grandmother was in the car,” she told Charleston City Paper, recalling peering through the rooftop window. “I saw the stars and I started singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, I guess you could say a Broadway vibrato.”
Long before Jackson first demonstrated her pipes, moviegoers from the 1990s might recall the kindly Scottish nanny Eugenia Doubtfire. The character leveraged the comic genius of the late Robin Williams as an employed dad named Daniel Hilliard who loses custody of his kids.
He must elude the detection of his disapproving ex-wife, and surmount bureaucratic hurdles of Sellner, the court liaison officer, proving Daniel will go to just about any hem length to spend time with his kids, even if that entailed donning latex noses and sporting padded skirts.
Now, Mrs. Doubtfire is coming to North Charleston Performing Arts Center, in a limited engagement from Oct. 6 to Oct. 11.
For the musical comedy adaptation, acclaimed director Jerry Zaks gussied up the story with some showstopping numbers, enlisting Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell for the adaptation, and Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick for music and lyrics. The production landed on Broadway from 2021 – 22.
From Trenton to touring
Born in Rockville Center, N.Y., Jackson and her mother moved back to the family land in Trenton as a child to stay with her grandmother.
After Jackson belted out that Broadway vibrato, her mother put her in church choir, then middle school choir, before studying drama at Strom Thurmond High School for her first two years. While there, the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts set up a table, recruiting students to come to their music school.
Out of around 100 hopefuls, she was selected for one of 16 spots in what became a transformative experience.
“We did yoga and stage combat. We did dancing, from modern dance to African dance. We had music and voice class and we did Shakespeare, so we had to learn about accents and dialects and understanding our voice and how to speak a certain way,” she recalls. “it was a lot, at the age of 15 or 16.”
Jackson then went to University of North Carolina School of the Arts to earn a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 2024. When she was invited to perform in a Black Theater United gala, she headed to New York, staying with her grandfather in Queens and auditioning, auditioning, auditioning.
Becoming Wanda
Returning to South Carolina, she got the call to audition for Mrs. Doubtfire. Family members kept seeing posters about the production, which she found a bit spooky.
She met Zaks at the final callback.
“I did something funny in my initial audition and the assistant director made a joke,” she recalled, having knocked on a wall rather than a door. “I just remember feeling so good about the audition. I felt really relaxed.”
It was her big break.
Since then, she has performed hundreds of shows all over the country, in Canada and soon on London’s West End. Her mother keeps tabs on her moves on a map, flagging her locale and her next destination with a butterfly pin.
Her interpretation is informed by her grandmother, Winifred Eubanks, who has been a social worker for over 40 years.
“I remember sometimes after school I would be dropped off at her office and I would witness the things and the paperwork that she had to go through and how tedious it was and how emotionally draining it could be.”
Jackson translates that stoicism and groundedness into comic relief. She also channels guidance offered by associate director Steve Edlund, who likened each character to a different instrument in the orchestra.
“Brian Kalinowski, who is our Frank Hilliard, he’s definitely our trumpet. DyVon Wycovia Buchanan, who plays Andre Mayem, is also some sort of horn. Daniel is obviously some sort of horn. But I feel like Wanda is more like a bass or something.”
For Jackson, having such a foundation of the role, has been instrumental in creating a character that sings, in every sense of the word.
“I would say with Wanda it really wasn’t that hard to navigate through simply because I had my own Wanda in my life, which was my grandmother.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Now, Mrs. Doubtfire is coming to North Charleston Performing Arts Center, 5001 Coliseum Drive, North Charleston. from Oct. 6 to Oct. 11. Tickets range from $62.80 to $113.05. More: northcharlestoncoliseumpac.com
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