Ketanji Brown Jackson, who made history as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, revealed in a recent interview that her rise to fame may have actually begun much earlier.
While at Harvard, Jackson was paired with actor Matt Damon, who rose to fame for his role in the “Bourne” film series, in a drama class. Damon was a year ahead of Jackson.
The two performed a scene from “Waiting for Godot.” Jackson said Norah O'Donnell on CBS News earlier this week.
“We've never actually acted, but we took acting classes together and we were paired up as scene partners … and of course he doesn't remember this,” she told the CBS Sunday Morning host.
“The reason I remember it is because he was already well known on and off campus, and it was so exciting to be his scene partner in that particular class,” she later added.
O'Donnell pressed the judge on what happened during the class.
“As I recall, we had to act out the scene, and we had to memorize parts of it, and we did it together. It was a two-person play, a two-person scene,” she replied. “And at the end, the professor said, 'Ketanji, that was great. Matt, let's do it again.'”
Jackson added: “I was like, 'Oh my God, I was better than Matt Damon in that scene.'”
Associated Press Report in 2022 Damon didn't remember the scene, but his rep told the newswire that the Hollywood star thought it was “really cool.”
The judge recounted the scene at an event Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
“I love theater. I was really into speech and debate in high school, but I wanted to do something different in college,” she said. “And out of all the different activities that I was involved in, I competed in the speech category, dramatic and humorous interpretation category, and I knew theater was the way to go.”
Her comments come as the judge has been in the media in recent weeks promoting her recently released autobiography, “Lovely One.”
Jackson will be sworn in as a Supreme Court justice in June 2022, filling the seat left vacant by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
Zach Schonfeld contributed.
