Character Breakdown: MARY JANE Cast Unpacks Their Roles

I mean she has a joie de vivre, you know, she really, she does not bemoan her situation

The only thing she bemoans occasionally is the system she finds herself in, you know

I mean it really takes a village to raise a kid and everyone needs a lot of support

and she needs a little bit more and it's just not set up for her to always receive that

But I just love her lust for life, the joy she gets from her child, her get up and go

every day, you know, she's really an extraordinary person to play. I play Sherry the night nurse who is just Mary Jane's friend and Alex's friend and she

loves them and she's great at her job but there's a command of what this world is that

allows for her to look at Mary Jane as a person and not as a charity case

So there's just a lot of humanity and skill there that just allows everybody to breathe

and be a human in the room. What I love about Dr. Toros is she's also great at her job and has a lot on her plate

and is smart and can still hear herself as a clinician and clock when to turn down the

clinician brain and when to turn up the human, I'm also a mom brain

I play Brianne and Chaya, Brianne and Chaya are two opposite sides of ends of a spectrum

and caring for a young child with disability. What I love is that we get to see someone with a lot of life experience and the gift

that she gives to Mary Jane in my opinion is admitting to some of the tough truths of

what this experience is like and really being an ally and saying you know what, some of

this is awful. I played Ruthie who's the superintendent and then at the end I play the hospice character

who, they're very different, it's a joy to do both and actually doing it with Rachel

we're so early on, you know we've only been doing this for a week, rehearsing for a week

but early on I noticed immediately there was a shift just because you know the former Mary

Jane was a certain human being, actor playing and then there's Rachel and that was, it's

I'm learning a lot about doing that, you don't just repeat, you're talking to the person

that you're actually talking to. I play Amelia who is a college student in town visiting her aunt who is Mary Jane's

night nurse and then I play Cat who is a music therapist at the hospital

They're also so different and I think when I read it I knew they were different but I

couldn't figure out exactly how and already a week and a bit into rehearsal it's become

so clear, they're both compassionate people but they approach the world totally different

Amelia is more closed off and sceptical, Cat is the most open and bright and they're

both sort of extremes of these young people who ultimately are just so full of love