"I want people to do something about this."īest known for her TV roles as national security advisor Nancy McNally in The West Wing and buffoonish hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in Nurse Jackie, Smith was motivated to address this issue by an incident in Baltimore, her hometown.Ī schoolboy had peed into a school water cooler, and the principal was going to have him arrested. "I just hope more people get to see it," she adds. She performed it last year to sold-out audiences before adapting it into a film that premieres on HBO on Saturday, February 24, at 8 p.m. "With this play, I have more intention than anything I've done," Smith says. Her latest work, Notes From the Field, zealously takes on the school-to-prison pipeline that funnels African-American and Latino students into the criminal justice system, thanks in large part to zero-tolerance policies and police presence in schools. In these works, she impersonates an entire community in crisis - one character at a time - with the goal of drawing attention to it. She eventually channeled her talents into provocative one-woman, documentary-style plays. "I never got in trouble," says the award-winning actress and playwright. As a child, Anna Deavere Smith liked to mimic teachers and other authority figures - but only when they weren't looking.
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