Oscar Nominee Da’Vine Joy Randolph On Sweeping Up Awards Season, How ‘Dolemite’ Led To ‘Holdovers’ & Opera Led To Acting – The Actor’s Side

Da’Vine Joy Randolph is her name, and she has been barreling through this awards season on a tear. Randolph has won a Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, National Board of Review Award and just about every critics group Supporting Actress honor there is.

And there are a lot, as I point out right at the top of our interview as she joins me for this new episode of my Deadline video series The Actor’s Side to talk about The Holdovers and the amazing ride she has been on because of it. Currently nominated for an Oscar, SAG and BAFTA Award, Randolph tells me it was the Eddie Murphy comedy Dolemite Is My Name that director Alexander Payne saw and then thought of her for the Holdovers role of Mary Lamb, the prep school employee whose son was killed in Vietnam and now is alone for the holiday break in 1970. She forms an unlikely family with a cranky professor (Paul Giamatti) and the unfortunate student (Dominic Sessa) left behind by his vacationing parents during the Christmas holidays.

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She also talks about her earlier acting days, including an unexpected introduction to opera which could have that sent her on a completely different career path. But acting at Temple University, Yale Drama and the British American Drama Academy led her on a different trajectory, one that opened up all sorts of roles and even a Tony nomination as Oda Mae Brown in the Broadway’s Ghost The Musical. Among her many film credits is working with Murphy in Dolemite Is My Name as Lady Reed and Robin Williams in The Angriest Man In Brooklyn. She also can be seen as the legendary Mahalia Jackson in Rustin and has a recurring role on Only Murders in the Building, among other projects. We talk about it all, including a couple of new action films she has coming out.

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To watch our conversation and the get “the actor’s side” of things from Da’Vine Joy Randolph, just click the link above.