Kara Young for the Win

Reported by Vogue.

Kara Young doesn't believe in downtime — and her schedule proves it. Back-to-back Tony wins for Purlie Victorious (2024) and Purpose (2025), a quick pivot to the off-Broadway run of Gruesome Playground Injuries, two films wrapped late in 2024 — Aleshea Harris's Is God Is and Boots Riley's I Love Boosters — and now the first Broadway revival of David Auburn's Pulitzer-winning Proof. She had planned a break, at least from performing. Then the universe laughed.

According to Vogue, a cascade of missed flights and cancellations kept Young from Boosters' South by Southwest premiere — and then came the call: Samira Wiley had to exit Proof for health reasons. Could Young step in? She flew back to New York on a Monday, hit rehearsals Tuesday, and was in previews within ten days. "Quick and dirty, the way it used to be," she told the magazine. "You work fast, you make choices, you jump into the fire." Her character Claire — the sharp, practical sister at the center of Proof's grief-soaked family drama — shares a steely self-sufficiency with Racine, the character she plays in Is God Is. Young says she's still building Claire's history and will be until her final performance, at which point Pose star Adrienne Warren steps in. Before that handoff, Young begins rehearsals for an off-Broadway revival of The Whoopi Monologues.

On Rage, Roots, and Is God Is

Harris's film is where Young's work cuts deepest. The story follows twin sisters — badly scarred survivors of a childhood fire, raised in foster care — who receive a dying message from their mother: find the man who tried to kill them all and finish it. Young describes it as "the most epic, Southern, Greek-odyssey-road-trip sisterhood of spirit." Her character Racine is the one who follows through. The violence is visceral, deliberately so. Young cites Harris's own framing: that audiences have never witnessed the full spectrum of Black women's rage onscreen — not like this. "We've seen the patriarchy do that over and over," Young said. "But we have never seen Black women like this, ever. It's Greek. It's like Medea killing her children." She describes a catharsis in the film's brutality — not a glorification, but a reckoning. Does Racine's path lead to healing or destruction? Young leaves that to the audience.

As for I Love Boosters, she still hasn't seen it — she ended up joining the Atlanta shoot almost accidentally, stopping by Boots Riley's set after Thanksgiving in New Orleans and walking into a fitting before she fully understood she'd been cast. She knows the story. She was there on set. The rest, apparently, is a surprise she's saving for herself.

Kara Young isn't chasing a moment — she's already three moments ahead of everyone trying to catch up.

Read the original at Vogue.