The Emmy and Golden Globe winner is creating a scholarship for Fordham Theatre students, giving back to the university that had a formative influence on her acting career.

At 19, Patricia Clarkson made a decision that changed everything for her. Attending Louisiana State University, near her hometown of New Orleans, she was missing the acting she had done in high school and feeling uncertain about her direction. Then she realized the change she needed: “New York was calling,” she said, “and I just had to go.”

She transferred to Fordham as a junior and flourished. After graduating summa cum laude with a degree in theatre, she earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama and went on to pursue a variety of complex roles on stage and screen, earning acclaim and awards. These include three Emmys, two of them for her performance in the HBO drama series Six Feet Under, and a 2019 Golden Globe for her work in another HBO series, Sharp Objects. Her other accolades include a 2003 Oscar nomination for her performance in Pieces of April and a best-actress Tony nomination in 2015 for her role in The Elephant Man.

Clarkson has spoken out on many social issues, including LGBTQ+ rights, and in the movie Monica, released last May, she plays an ailing woman being cared for by the transgender daughter she had expelled from her home years before. In the upcoming film Lilly, she portrays equal-pay activist Lilly Ledbetter—whom she recently described to The Hollywood Reporter as “one of my heroes.”

She has regularly returned to Fordham to meet with students in the theatre program. Now, she’s giving them a new form of support—one that reflects her own experience as a student.

Why did creating a scholarship appeal to you?
My heart is always with Fordham. I loved this school. I am always thankful for my beginnings, and I think it’s why I am successful. I know it’s a struggle to be an actor, and I thought, “Well, I’m going to give someone just a little bit of extra help because that’s what I needed when I was there.” With just a little bit more money, it would’ve been easier for me. I’m thrilled and excited to be doing this. I’m proud of my alma mater, and I’m proud to help out in the little way I can.

What was your transition to Fordham like?
I was welcomed with open arms. I had no idea what I was walking into, and I walked into heaven, if you know what I mean, at Fordham. I arrived at this great theatre department and quickly had this extraordinary mentor in [acting professor]Joe Jezewski, and he took me under his wing. He just cared—he said, “You have a gift, Patti, don’t waste it. Let’s really work on it.” He’s the reason I got into the Yale School of Drama. Everyone said, “Oh, you have to have connections to get into Yale,” and Joe was like, “That’s crazy. We’re going to work hard on your auditions. You’re going to get into Yale.” I had this incredible support system, along with my incredible parents who were sacrificing so very much for me to be there. Fordham is conducive to helping people—I think it’s just conducive to learning, and to making you feel at home and making everyone welcome, which is very Jesuit.

Which of your movie roles has had the greatest impact on you?
That would be hard to say because every film you do, every part you play, it still remains with you. I shot Monica almost two and a half years ago, and it’s all still with me.

How does that work?
As actors, we have to like our character and relate to them. Otherwise, you’re just going to be playing [the part], not living it. It has to be a part of you in some way. When I was at Fordham, I started to realize I had a long way to go—acting wasn’t creating, acting was being. And I play, at times, characters that are quite distant from me. In Monica, I’m a woman in probably the last month of life, and I’m quite robbed of speech and movement, often the two biggest assets you can have as an actor. That’s what is exciting about acting—suddenly you’re going to be challenged to find other ways to portray a character. It’s a beautiful film, and I’m proud and thrilled to be a part of it.

With your role in the movie She Said, you helped tell the origin story of the #MeToo movement. Is it having a sustained impact?
Well, it was vital to our industry, a much-needed wake-up call. Women really have risen with the #MeToo movement. Not only are we safer, and not only is our pay better, predatory behavior is no longer accepted. We still have a ways to go, especially behind the camera. And we need more female voices, and we need many more people of color to rise in our business. But we’re making advancements, and that’s what is crucial.

Is there a type of character you haven’t portrayed yet, that you would like to?
Oh God, I played everything, no! I just want a great script and a great director. That’s really all I’m looking for right now.

See related Fordham News article on Patricia Clarkson’s scholarship gift.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Chris Gosier is the director of special projects in Fordham’s marketing and communications division and a frequent contributor to Fordham Magazine.

Throughout her career, Clarkson has sought out diverse and challenging roles and won wide acclaim for her performances on stage and screen. In an interview, she noted her parents’ sacrifices for her education, as well as her part-time work at a diner as a student. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to give someone just a little bit of help, a little bit of extra, because that’s what I needed when I was there,’” she said. “It would’ve been easier for me. I’m thrilled to be doing this, and I’m excited.”

Clarkson said she received mentoring and support at Fordham that were crucial to her career. “My heart is always with Fordham,” she said. “I’m proud of my alma mater, and I’m proud to help out in the little way I can.”

An engaged alumna, she regularly returns to campus to speak with students in the theatre program. Clarkson was inducted into Fordham’s Hall of Honor in 2016 and, in 2018, received an honorary doctorate from the University.

“Patricia Clarkson embodies the best of Fordham,” said Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham University. “Her determination and blazing talent make us so very proud. She is our ambassador, telling everyone how much her Fordham education matters to her. Best of all, she wants to pass that gift forward to other students, both with her generous gift and in the time she gives them every year on campus.”

May Adrales, director of the Fordham Theatre program, said Clarkson is “an exemplar of Fordham Theatre education, a consummate actor who radiates curiosity and vibrancy.”

The scholarship will go to students who possess Clarkson’s same fervor and fortitude in the pursuit of acting, as well as demonstrated potential, she said. “We are grateful for her support and hope to honor her immense talent and extraordinary body of work.”

Diverse and Compelling Performances

A New Orleans native, Clarkson attended Louisiana State University before transferring to Fordham as a junior. After earning her bachelor’s degree in theatre, she earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. Clarkson won Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2006 for her portrayal of the free-spirited Aunt Sarah on the HBO drama series Six Feet Under, and in 2022 earned a third Emmy for her role in the British comedy series State of the Union.

In 2019, Clarkson won a Golden Globe for her performance in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects, in which she plays the matriarch of a troubled family of three daughters. Rather than portraying her character as “a one-note monster,” Variety noted, “Clarkson ensured there were complicated layers to peel back not only with every episode but every scene.”

In 2003, she was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for her portrayal of a dying mother confronting her anger with her estranged daughter in Pieces of April. Her performance in The Elephant Man on Broadway earned her a best-actress Tony nomination in 2015.

Clarkson has spoken out on behalf of causes including environmental protection, LGBTQ rights, and giving women more opportunities in theatre and film. In the new movie Monica, released in May, she plays an ailing woman who is unknowingly being cared for by the transgender daughter she had expelled from her home many years before.

Scholarship gifts advance Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, the University’s $350 million campaign to enhance the entire Fordham student experience. Learn more about the campaign and make a gift.

“I like doing the quirkier stories,” she says. “I’ve discovered there’s something wonderful about seeing the special in the everyday, in bringing the stories of everyday people to life.”

Just like the show’s host, Charles Osgood, FCRH ’54, Kugel got her start reporting in New York City as a student journalist for WFUV, Fordham’s public radio station. Her current position at CBS takes her across the country.

This summer, during what Kugel calls a typical week, she attended a reenactment of Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield, Illinois; conducted an interview with the band Little Big Town in Nashville, Tennessee; produced a story on an 80-year-old Wurlitzer organ player in Los Angeles; and profiled Bo Derek at her ranch in Northern California.

Some of Kugel’s favorite stories include covering a conference for Gone with the Wind enthusiasts, profiling a ship-in-a-bottle builder, and interviewing Sergei Filin, the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet.

Whatever the topic, Kugel’s role as a producer allows her to craft each story from the beginning, to be “involved from the very spark of the idea to the completion,” she says.

“At Sunday Morning I get to kind of be a student for a living—I get to become somewhat of a subject matter expert on a ton of different topics for a short period of time. And I get to bring these stories that people might not otherwise have known about to light. That storytelling aspect is really why I do what I do.”

Kugel’s talents have helped Sunday Morning maintain its indelible status as a top-ranked morning show. The program has won two Emmys for Outstanding Morning Program during her three years as an associate producer. Each time, the staff celebrated with an ice cream party.

Kugel keeps her first Emmy on the mantelpiece in her Upper West Side apartment.

“When I graduated from Fordham, I made a promise to my mother that I would give her my first Emmy,” Kugel says. “She let me keep the first one on my mantel, but she reminded me about that promise when I got this most recent one.”

Kugel maintains strong ties with Fordham in both her personal and professional life. At past alumni events, she has discussed how networking at Fordham, and at WFUV in particular, helped jumpstart her career. In fact, each of Kugel’s three post-graduation positions—at ABC, WOR, and now at CBS—has been the direct result of a Fordham connection.

“Charlie [Osgood]  and I talk about Fordham all the time,” she says, adding that her core group of friends has remained the same since her freshman year.

She also just completed a two-year stint as the chair of Fordham’s Young Alumni Committee, where she helped institute the new and popular All-Jesuit Alumni Happy Hour series. “I definitely think this is something that will become a tradition for young alumni. [It’s] what I’m most proud of during my time at the head of the committee.”

Though she recently ended her term as president, Kugel plans to stay very involved with the Young Alumni Committee and hopes to attend both Homecoming and the Young Alumni Yacht Cruise this fall. But what she’s most looking forward to is Jubilee 2016. “It will be my five-year reunion,” she says,“I’m already making plans for it.”

In her office at CBS, just above her desk, hangs a Fordham pennant. “Fordham will always feel like home to me,” she says. It’s part of her story.

Susan Lucci, MC ’68, best known for playing the vixen Erica Kane on All My Children—and for receiving a record 19 Daytime Emmy nominations before finally winning the award for best actress in 1999—will soon stand at another awards podium.

On June 6 at Fordham, the Marymount College Alumnae Association will recognize Lucci with its Alumna of Achievement Award.

Lucci, in turn, is grateful for the lasting impact of her Marymount education, which she says, “I use every day in my work.”

“We were learning from people who were actually working in the business. It was a great department and a great opportunity.”

She let the whole world know her gratitude for her acting teachers during a heartfelt speech at the 1999 Daytime Emmy Awards. Lucci named several mentors “who were so good at teaching and helped me to grow,” including Ron Weyand. The Obie Award-winning actor, who died in 2003, taught at Marymount for 40 years.

“He was an amazing teacher. Tough love. Tough love. And that was good,” Lucci says. In her bestselling memoir, All My Life (HarperCollins, 2011), she wrote: “Mr. Weyand wasn’t just a great teacher—he was also sensitive to us as people.” He spoke of the challenges of building an acting career and advised the lucky ones who made it, ‘[D]on’t allow yourself to become so … removed from humanity that you can no longer experience and express humanity.’

His advice stuck with Lucci, who landed the role of the dynamic Erica Kane less than two years after graduating from Marymount.

“She was a very modern heroine,” Lucci says of her signature character. “She was the troublemaker, but there was so much humanity that I saw on the pages that [All My Children producer] Agnes Nixon wrote that, to me, it was a part that I could really sink my teeth into.”

All My Children went off the air in 2011, but in the long-running show’s final year, another member of the Fordham family joined the cast. Christina Bennett Lind, FCLC ’05, assumed the role of Erica Kane’s daughter, Bianca Montgomery, when actress Eden Riegel left after 10 years in the part.

“She had a very difficult thing to do, to step into that role,” Lucci says of Lind, “and she did it beautifully.”

Lucci soon found another close cast and crew when she joined Devious Maids in 2013.

“It’s a love fest, just like it was with All My Children,” she says of the Lifetime series.

Lucci plays the wealthy, naive Genevieve Delatour—a kind of “cousin of Erica Kane” is how the show’s creator, Marc Cherry, described the character to Lucci.

The show’s third season premieres several days before Lucci comes to Jubilee for the Marymount reunion, where she will be honored alongside two of her fellow alumnae. Mary Donohue, MC ’79, will receive the Gloria Gaines Memorial Award, and Kay Delaney Bring, MC ’60, will receive the Golden Dome Award.

The ceremony will take place in Butler Commons, the space on Fordham’s campus that honors Mother Marie Joseph Butler, RSHM, who founded the all-women’s Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, in 1907. Since the college closed in 2007, Marymount alumnae and friends have gathered regularly at events and reunions hosted by Fordham.

Lucci dedicated a chapter of her memoir to her time at Marymount, calling it a “wonderful life experience” of meeting lifelong friends from all over the world and learning from accomplished teachers.

“Study with the best,” Lucci writes, recalling her father’s advice, “and it was reiterated during my studies at Marymount.”

– Rachel Buttner

A documentary about the experience of African Americans in Tennessee during the Civil War earned Fordham business faculty member Clarence Ball an Emmy on Jan. 25 from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Looking Over Jordan: African Americans and the War, a documentary produced in conjunction with Nashville Public Television, received an Emmy for outstanding achievement in the Historic/Cultural Program category for the Mid-South Region, which encompasses Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama.

A clinical instructor who teaches business communications to undergraduates, Ball worked with scholars from Duke University, Vanderbilt University, Yale University, Tennessee State University and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on the project.
“I have always been fascinated with American history: more specifically, the periods leading up to the Harlem Renaissance,” he said.

“When I heard about the project, I was eager to find scholars who would tell stories of those nameless and often voiceless individuals who lost so much during and after the war.”

The documentary, which features in-depth interviews with Civil War scholars, historical reenactments, and music, illustrates the experiences of former enslaved persons on the road to freedom as they worked to rebuild families and rise above oppression and violence.

The documentary aired in February 2013 on WNPT (Nashville’s PBS affiliate) in recognition of Black History Month, and Ball and his team received the Emmy nomination in October. They received the award last month at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

Ball said his experience sends an excellent message about the power of networking to business students at the Gabelli School. The offer to work on the documentary came about after he met executives from National Public Television at an industry event and shared his experience in documentaries from his years as a graduate student at Michigan State University. Within two days, he delivered his résumé and documentary reel. Soon after, he received a call to work on a project to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

The rest, as they say, is history.

— Claire Curry

Looking Over Jordan: African Americans and the War, a documentary produced in conjunction with Nashville Public Television, received an Emmy for outstanding achievement in the Historic/Cultural Program category for the Mid-South Region, which encompasses Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama.

A clinical instructor who teaches business communications to undergraduates, Ball worked with scholars from Duke University, Vanderbilt University, Yale University, Tennessee State University and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on the project.
“I have always been fascinated with American history: more specifically, the periods leading up to the Harlem Renaissance,” he said.

“When I heard about the project, I was eager to find scholars who would tell stories of those nameless and often voiceless individuals who lost so much during and after the war.”

The documentary, which features in-depth interviews with Civil War scholars, historical reenactments, and music, illustrates the experiences of former enslaved persons on the road to freedom as they worked to rebuild families and rise above oppression and violence.

The documentary aired in February 2013 on WNPT (Nashville’s PBS affiliate) in recognition of Black History Month, and Ball and his team received the Emmy nomination in October. They received the award last month at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

Ball said his experience sends an excellent message about the power of networking to business students at the Gabelli School. The offer to work on the documentary came about after he met executives from National Public Television at an industry event and shared his experience in documentaries from his years as a graduate student at Michigan State University. Within two days, he delivered his résumé and documentary reel. Soon after, he received a call to work on a project to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

The rest, as they say, is history.

— Claire Curry

“Looking Over Jordan: African Americans and the War,” a documentary produced in conjunction with Nashville Public Television, received an emmy for outstanding achievement  in the category of Historic/Cultural Program for the mid-South region, which encompasses Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama.

A clinical instructor who teaches undergraduate business communications, Professor Ball worked with scholars from Duke University, Vanderbilt University, Yale University, Tennessee State University and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on the project.

“I have always been fascinated with American history: more specifically, the periods leading up to the Harlem Renaissance,” he said.

“When I heard about the project, I was eager to find scholars who would tell stories of those nameless and often voiceless individuals who lost so much during and after the war.”

The documentary, which features in-depth interviews with Civil War scholars, historical reenactments and music, illustrates the experiences of former enslaved persons on the road to freedom as they worked to rebuild families and rise above oppression and violence.

The documentary aired in February 2013 on WNPT (Nashville’s PBS affiliate) in recognition of Black History Month, and Professor Ball and his team received the Emmy nomination in October. They got the award on January 25 at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

Ball said his experience sends an excellent message about the power of networking to business students at the Gabelli School. The offer to work on the documentary came about after he met executives from National Public Television at an industry event, and shared his experience in documentaries from his years as a graduate student at Michigan State University. Within two days, he delivered his résumé and documentary reel, and soon after, he received a call to work on a project to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

The rest, as they say, is history.

You can watch the documentary here.

– Claire Curry