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On May 1, Jez Butterworth鈥檚 haunting dysfunctional family drama The Hills of California鈥�which completed its limited London transfer at the Broadhurst Theatre in December 2024鈥�picked up seven Tony nominations, including Best Play.

One of those nominations was for Olivier-winning stage and screen actor Laura Donnelly, who gave one of the greatest performances of the 2024鈥�2025 Broadway season. Actually, that isn't quite true. Donnelly offered two of the greatest performances of the season just ended, playing the dual roles of struggling single stage mother Veronica Webb in the first half of the evening and her grown daughter Joan in the second.

Set in a rundown hotel in 1976 Blackpool, England, Hills of California follows three sisters, who reunite as their mother Veronica (Donnelly in the play's first two acts) is on her deathbed. The three siblings are awaiting the arrival of a fourth sister, Joan (Donnelly in the third act), who is supposedly also returning after decades living in America. Via Rob Howell's impressive rotating set, with its imposing staircases, the play switches back and forth in time between the unhappiness of the present to the hopeful longing of the girl鈥檚 childhood鈥攚hen their mother spent the majority of her passion and money trying to mold the foursome into a singing group. That dream would not come to fruition.

Donnelly's work as Mrs. Webb (whose ever-growing desperation to find a better life for her daughters was palpable) as well as the adult, aloof Joan (who tries to reconcile the trauma of her childhood) were equally devastating. Although the three-act drama was full of heartbreak, there were also equal doses of laughter and music, both from the multitalented young girls who played the aspiring Webb Sisters, and the adult actors who portrayed their later-in-life selves. 

Two weeks after nominations were announced, I had the great pleasure of chatting with Donnelly, who was previously Tony-nominated for her work in The Ferryman, also penned by her long-time partner Butterworth. Donnelly, also known for her work on screen in The Nevers, Outlander, Say Nothing, and more, spoke with great excitement, not just about her Tony nomination but the play itself and her profession as a whole. 

I have to admit I was a little anxious prior to the interview, probably because this production affected me so strongly, with Donnelly's performances particularly moving. Afterwards, however, I thought everyone should get the chance to chat with the spirit-raising actress, whose voice is filled with much warmth, joy, and enthusiasm. 

That complete interview with Donnelly, who recently picked up a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play for her performance in The Hills of California, follows. Read on to discover why the first day of Broadway rehearsals was the "most distressing" Donnelly ever had in a rehearsal room; the admiration she and Butterworth have for each other; why there will likely not be a screen adaptations of Hills; and whether a musical is in the cards for the Ireland native.

How did you find out you had been nominated the day it was announced?
Laura Donnelly: I tried not to! [Laughs] I tried to sleep through it because I'm in California, so I was three hours behind. I had just been shooting through the night the night before, and was then due to go in and do another late shoot that day. So I was just trying to get my sleep. I put my phone on "do not disturb." And, I thought, "I'll find out when I wake." But, of course, my system woke me up anyway, because I wanted to know, and I wanted to know how the play as a whole had done. I wanted to know if my husband's writing had been nominated, all of that! I woke up and got all the info and tried to get back to sleep for a bit. But, of course, I was too full of adrenaline at that point. So, it was just a tired shoot for the rest of the day. [Laughs]

What did it mean to you that not only you were nominated, but that the show received seven nominations?
Oh, I mean, that was massive. It's so gratifying to know that we stuck in people's heads and then their hearts. I'm aware that we closed before Christmas, and the memory spans of voters are famously short, right? [Laughs] The idea that we're not on [Broadway] right [now], and yet got the most nominations of any play... [Ed. note: Hills of California is tied with John Proctor Is the Villain for most-nominated play, both with seven nods.] 

It's so gratifying to know that we came out and we were telling the story that we felt really passionately about, and to know that translated is just so satisfying.

I'm always curious to hear how actors describe the characters they're playing. And, since you played two, how would you describe Veronica and Joan?
I mean, for me, Veronica is a very hard-working, very loving mother who really wants the best for her girls and wants better for them than she had herself. She makes a crucial mistake. It surprised me when some people saw her as being some kind of monster, stage mom, or some kind of, you know, mom-ager. I don't see that at all. I see a woman trying her absolute hardest. I just relate so much to what she's trying [to do]. I think Joan really sums it up at the end of Act Three, when she said, "All Mom wanted was for us to be safe." When we take into consideration the context of her world, the era she's grown up in, and what she's tried to do as a single mother in a place like Blackpool in the '50s, it's extraordinary what she has achieved by herself. She has had to struggle and fight tooth and nail for absolutely everything that she is able to provide for her girls. She just wants them to go out and be able to have some agency in the world, especially as women in that time, for them to be able to have their own lives. I've got daughters鈥攊t's so relatable. What I finished with with Veronica, what I'm left with, is just feeling so, so sorry for her because I think that she really did try her best.

And from my point of view of Joan鈥攏ow, I love Joan. I mean, Joan is the one that stays with me. I'm out in California right now, and I've been living in Laurel Canyon, which is, of course, where Joan had been hanging out before she came back to Blackpool. She absolutely stays with me. I also brought some of her rings out with me. I have full respect for Joan and her outlook that she reaches by the end of the play, where she kind of looks at everything and thinks, "This is the stuff that makes up a life. I'm not going to wallow in pity for myself. I'm also going to recognize, though, that I have wounds and needs and therefore can't walk upstairs and see my mother." She just really comes to such clarity by the end. What I love about her, especially as she leaves the stage, is that she has what I know Jez set out from the beginning to give her, which is a real rock-and-roll spirit; one of, "You can't take me down. I'm doing what I want to do. And here I go back out to try all over again." I have such huge respect for that. I love her.

From what I could tell watching and listening to people afterwards, many in the audience didn't realize that you were playing both characters. Did you have a feeling one way or the other, whether you wanted them to realize it was you playing both?
I never dreamt that that would be what would happen! I was beyond thrilled when I started hearing that that's what was going on. I love that! To me, that's the greatest compliment to what I'm doing that I could possibly think to receive. I was really aiming to create two very, very distinct characters, but to also make them fully fleshed-out, 3D human beings, for them to not look like they were kind of speaking to each other too much. It's so easy to fall into that. It's so easy to bring so much of yourself to a character that it is clear that it's you, regardless... Somebody who shall remain nameless, when I did it in London, said to me, "I mean, the transformation is amazing. I think a lot of that's down to the wig." [Laughs] I was like, "Oh, thanks. Thanks very much." [Big laugh] So I was really hoping that it wasn't coming down to the wig and the costume. I was really hoping that it was coming down to my performance. The fact that people didn't realize it [was me] just tells me that I achieved everything that I wanted to achieve, and it makes me so proud.

Between London and Broadway, the third act was significantly rewritten. [Ed. note: Joan has a baby and husband in the London version that was written out for the Broadway version.] How do you think it affected your performance as Joan and the play in general? Did you notice any shift in audience reaction or your own?
Huge. I knew it from the moment that I read the rewrites. It was the most distressing day I've ever had in a rehearsal room. I burst into tears getting to the end for two reasons. One was because I knew that it was so touching and that it was by far a better Act Three, and that it was the Act Three that the play deserved. It was so gratifying to read that. 

At the same time, I was more terrified than I've ever been in my life, because I know the process of discovering a character. I've done it many, many times. It's always nerve-racking, approaching one鈥攐r in this case two鈥攁nd hoping that you can do right by the writing and right by everybody else and all of that. And right by yourself. I've never had to attempt to delete a character and imprint a new one on top of it that resembles the old one in many, many ways and says a lot of the same things that the old one says, but in a completely different way and with completely different emotional meaning behind it. I knew straight away that I was going to have to create a whole new version of Joan. The physicality had to be different, and her energy really had to be different beyond anything else. To try and take a new route through sometimes familiar dialogue was really weird. It felt like having to create new neural pathways. We only had 10 days to do it鈥攊t was so intimidating. 

I am so pleased it happened, not only because the play was absolutely so much better for it, but because I got to find out what I'm capable of. It's the most scared I've ever been at work, the most doubting that I've ever been of myself. I think I achieved more, therefore, than I've ever achieved before. And that, for anybody in any world, is a huge moment of growth. So I'm eternally grateful for it. 

When your partner is the playwright, how much discussion is there about each other's work? Are there any rules, written or unwritten, about what you will say to each other?
I don't think that there are. Well, he would probably say that there are probably some unwritten rules. In the deep past, when he attempted to direct me in any capacity, it hasn't gone down very well. [Laughs] We both know that our skills and talents lie in very, very different areas. We both trust that each other knows what they're doing, and we're both hugely impressed by each other. It's really good that we don't tend to feel the need to get involved much in what the other one's doing. As he says it, he washes up, and I dry. [Laughs] It really does seem to fall along those lines. It seems to be quite easily divided. We don't struggle to stay out of each other's way. I think that's because we both really admire what the other one does.

I have a feeling that's probably pretty rare in a similar situation.
Yeah, it probably is. I know that I know absolutely nothing about writing, and he knows he knows nothing about acting.

It's such an emotionally intense piece, especially for both of your characters. How did you go about unwinding after the show and leaving the characters behind?
Yeah, it definitely becomes trickier as time goes on, of course, because you become more and more exhausted. There is something about it that is so unique to theatre, and is the joy of it, as well as the task of it, is that the repetition means that the emotional life of it goes deeper and deeper and deeper over time. You are carrying more around with you towards the end of a run than you were at the beginning. I found it with The Ferryman, and I really found it with this one, that I am just dead exhausted in between the shows. It's a case of [needing] as much sleep as possible. Then, as time goes on, trying to remain emotionally gentle, I think, is the only thing that I can do it. I know that I'm not going to have the capacity to deal with anything outside of work. 

Certainly, in our household, it helps that Jez is part of all of the process, and therefore we know to be gentle with each other. It's really tricky to have a life outside of a play when you're doing a run. I've still yet to find a way of finding a better balance. Maybe with roles like this, that doesn't happen, and you just have to accept that sometimes there will be, like, a six-month period in your life where you just have to give everything over to that and that that's okay. That's why I don't do it a lot. I'm not doing a play every year. If you are going to give that much of yourself to it, then you've got to make sure that you've spent all the time in between recovering and taking care of all the other things in your life as well. That's why I don't do it very often. I could definitely do more plays with roles that aren't as demanding as this one, but when it comes to something like this, or with The Ferryman, then it takes a bit of time in between. 

I would imagine it takes time to get back to the point where you even want to attempt it again.
Yeah, absolutely. You've got to get real enthusiasm back again because you know that from day one, you start on a process that's going to change your life temporarily and, in some ways, completely long term as well. There's always a bit of [your life] that will be changed from having done that [role]. 

There were so many musical elements in the show, I wonder if doing a musical has ever interested you.
I mean, I would love to do one, but I am not trained to do one. [Laughs] It would take a director with a lot of patience to come in and go, "Alright, I'm gonna take you from scratch." Any of my talent that is in that area is very, very raw. I don't play piano. I just learned piano for this. So it's not like I could get up and do any better than what I did on the stage. The idea of having an opportunity to do something like that, absolutely, I'd love to. It, again, it's stretching into areas and expanding and doing things that I don't think right now I can do. I think you always have to say yes to that stuff.

I wouldn't have known that you didn't play piano before.
Thanks! I took some lessons leading up. That's the handy thing about being married to the playwright. He did give me a heads up about six months before. He was like, "Get some piano lessons." And I was like, "Okay!" So I got some piano lessons. That was the scariest part of the whole job, which was pretty good, actually, because...in London, when it came to the long rehearsal period we had, and then going into previews, I was so petrified of playing the piano that it actually took any doubt away from the acting side of things. I created two characters in the way that I knew how, because I thought, "Well, that bit I know how to do!" All of my fear was channeled into the piano. 

For much of the cast, it was their Broadway debut. I wonder what it was like at the final performance. It must have been very emotional for people.
Yeah, huge. For so many of us, we'd been part of that process for well over a year, and pretty nonstop. We had a bit of time off over the summer, but we came to Broadway hot on the heels of the London run. It was a huge thing to say goodbye to it and, in a lot of ways, to say goodbye to each other. Of course, we remain friends and remain in contact and all of that. But to know that we weren't going to be spending all day, every day together like we had been for well over a year, was really tough. 

Any play like this, that is as beautifully written and as beautifully rendered as it is in the way that Jez and [director] Sam Mendes are capable of... you live in that world. It goes so deep inside you, the characters do. You come to love them. Outside of our characters, we did all offer, particularly the women, there was just such love and support there. So saying goodbye to that stuff is always incredibly difficult. And, at the same time, we all felt like we couldn't do another week. [Laughs] We did not have it in us. It was both! These things are always a mix. It's always complicated, and that's kind of the joy of it.

Is there any talk of a film version or streaming adaptation? 
No, there hasn't been. I know that Jez is always very reluctant to create films out of any of the plays that he writes simply because he very purposely writes plays because they need to be plays, because there's something inherently theatrical in them. The first idea that came to him for this play was the idea of a mother and a grown-up daughter played by the same person because you would then see the direct consequences of the mother's actions onto a daughter. Like, Joan walking onto the stage to "Gimme Shelter," and that there's been a two-hour build up to her; that's just not going to land the same way in a film. You have to be in a theatre. You have to be watching that live for that to send the right shivers up your spine I think.

And also that set [which is also Tony-nominated]. What was it like the first day鈥擨 guess this would have been in London鈥攚here you all walked on and saw that huge staircase and the rotating set?
Yeah, it's incredible. I don't think any of the cast had had the experience of being on a Rob Howell set before, other than me, because he had done The Ferryman. I knew how amazing it was to get to walk on and to be able to exist on one of his sets. How practically helpful they are, as well as being beautiful and metaphorical. He manages to bring in everything from so theatrical into the minute details that are really, practically, of so much help to an actor. His sets are such a joy to perform on. And, certainly those stairs!

The first time we all sat out front to watch the revolve happen, that was a real goosebumps moment for everybody. It was just, just incredible. And I knew that for so many people in the audience, they would be looking at that set in the first half of the first act, and not even know that there was a revolve coming and that there was a whole other set on the other side. It's incredible. I didn't even spot as well, as somebody else then pointed out, that, of course, so much of this play revolves around music, and the stage revolves like a vinyl player. Of course, Rob has thought that, but it didn't even occur to me until somebody else pointed it out. I just love his work so much. Though, unfortunately, it always involves getting to know some very steep stairs. [Laughs] You've got to get confident on them!

That moment when you first see the sisters young鈥攊t's so moving, and it reminded me a bit of Sondheim's Follies, when you first see the ghosts of their younger selves appear. There's something about going back to the innocence when you've already seen the present, as you say, can only be done in the theatre and be as moving.
Yeah, I think so. And I think that's just one of those things that will usually be very moving for any of us. As you say that, I find that deeply moving already, having never watched that [musical]. The idea of revisiting a more innocent point in any of our lives is just something that that we can all be instantly touched by. I can only imagine, certainly with our play, how that must have been as that stage came around. You've already gotten to know three of those girls, and then there they are鈥�.

That's why I love doing new plays. I haven't done an established play in a long time now, in many years. I just find myself so, so drawn towards new plays because I love that telling an audience a story for the first time. I just find that to be the entire point of what I do.

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Photos: The Hills of California on Broadway

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