Breaking Baz: Denzel Washington & Jake Gyllenhaal Task Up-And-Comer Molly Osborne To Make Broadway Debut As Desdemona In ‘Othello’

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline can reveal that Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will be joined by fast-rising West End actress Molly Osborne, who will play Desdemona opposite them, in the spring 2025 Broadway revival of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Upon seeing Osborne’s audition tape, Washington and others were so impressed that they are said to have expressed a keenness to cast her immediately.

Washington, soon to be seen in Gladiator 2 with Paul Mescal, will play the title character, while Gyllenhaal, currently starring in the Presumed Innocent series on Apple TV+, will take on the part of the manipulative Iago.

Othello producer Brian Anthony Moreland confirmed that both stars had seen Osborne’s reel, and pointedly reasoned that “obviously she wouldn’t be doing it if they hadn’t” seen it and approved her.

Moreland explained that he, director Kenny Leon and casting director Duncan Stewart of ARC Casting searched widely for an artist to perform alongside Washington and Gyllenhaal.

“The role is such a heavy role in the canon of Shakespeare’s work,” Moreland remarked, and he understood that whoever was cast as Othello’s wife would be working with great “beasts,” as he put it, of the stage.

“I call them people who eat the stage, people who you can’t take your eyes off them,” Moreland exclaimed. “They devour every single moment that they’re there. They make multiple notes out of that one note,” he said, adding that on a hunch he decided to look at actors in London.

He started looking at Olivier Award-winning people, and then at who else was in their category and “well, who was their understudy? Who was their standby? Who else, who replaced them?”

Moreland smiled, then said, ”And the name that kept popping up was Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly!”

As Moreland and his colleagues reached out to more of their theatre colleagues in London, he kept hearing the same chants.

Moreland contacted Osborne’s manager, Steven Kavovit at Thruline Entertainment and her longtime London agent Lou Coulson at Lou Coulson Associates.

Osborne, who made her London theatre debut as Tzeitel in an acclaimed revival of Fiddler on the Roof — directed, beautifully, by Trevor Nunn at the Menier Chocolate Factory (it later transferred into the West End’s Playhouse Theatre) — put herself on tape.

Leon watched it, Moreland said. “Kenny immediately called back and said, ‘That’s her!’ And I said, ‘I agree. That’s her.’ Kenny got on a plane, he went over to visit her. And he called as soon as he was done meeting with her and said, ‘That’s our Desdemona.’ That’s how we got her,” said Moreland, who was a producer of the superb 2019 production of Sea Wall/A Life that starred Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge at the Hudson Theatre.

More recently, Moreland produced The Piano Lesson with Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks and John David Washington, and the current revival of The Wiz at the Marquis Theatre.

In a statement, Leon said, “I am so excited to welcome Molly Osborne to our Broadway cast of Othello as ‘Desdemona.’ Her unique blend of heart and intellect, coupled with a natural vulnerability, makes her a truly captivating actress. I am thrilled to welcome her to our theatre community and eagerly anticipate collaborating with her on her Broadway debut.”

Osborne let out a huge sigh of relief when we met for breakfast on a recent sunny morning at the Dean Street Townhouse in Soho. “I’ve sort of been keeping it under wraps for so long,” she said, smiling brightly.

She told how Kavovit, her manager, contacted her about making an audition tape.

“This one just came through as a tape and as always, these things are so exciting,” but she didn’t expect anything to come of it. “You send the tape, and then forget about it, as lots of people do,” she said, noting that several months prior she had flown to New York to audition in person for something else, which she didn’t get.

For her Othello tape she read from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “I just focused on the text and the language and on harnessing the poetry,” she said, and she recited a poem and told a funny story, all of which clearly resonated with Moreland and Leon — and Washington and Gyllenhaal.

A few weeks later, Leon was in town and had arranged to meet with Osborne at Coulson’s office.

However, Osborne spotted Leon, per chance, the night before at the West End opening of (Broadway-bound) The Picture of Dorian Gray, which starred the incredible Sarah Snook, where she was helping out the show’s Story House PR press team doing vox pop interviews on the red carpet. 

It’s just one of many jobs the hard-working thespian takes on in between acting work. 

Leon directed Washington previously in the 2010 Fences produced by Scott Rudin (Washington won the best actor Tony], and they teamed again on the 2014 production of Raisin in the Sun for which Leon took the Tony for best director of a play.

The director talked with Osborne at Coulson’s office the following day.

“We had a really nice chat and we said goodbye,” Osborne recalled.

It was several weeks before she heard from her manager who informed her that there might be a chemistry test with Washington and Gyllenhaal. When she didn’t hear back about that, she was resigned to thinking that it wasn’t to be.

Weeks went by until one day, when she was in Coulson’s office, she heard that Leon and Moreland had cast her as Desdemona.

She was in a daze for two days “before I then burst into tears,” Osborne said.

It’s a breathtaking moment for an actor who has never had her name up in lights before. And it’s hard to recall the last time a promising Brit was catapulted across the Atlantic to star in play opposite not one but two enormous Hollywood stars, who, by the way, are as at home on stage as they are on the big screen, often more so.

To be sure though, to paraphrase Presidential hopeful Vice President Kamala Harris, Osborne earned it before she won it.

Osborne, a native of Wivenhoe in north-eastern Essex, near Colchester, had a love for performing at a young age. With her parents’ encouragement, she moved to London at the age of 18 to study musical theater at the celebrated Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

Her first role after graduating was in Nunn’s superb production of Fiddler on the Roof. The famed director, a former artistic chief of the Royal Shakespeare Company, makes his actors rigorously investigate the text as thoroughly as if they would a play by Shakespeare.

She later returned to the Menier Chocolate Factory to play Chana in Paula Vogel’s Indecent directed by Rebecca Taichman. Recently she has appeared in the world premiere musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button directed by Jethro Compton at the Southwark Playhouse.

She has also appeared in PBS’ Call the Midwife and she has a role in the Prime Video series Anansi Boys, based on a Neil Gaiman graphic novel.

Her parents are artistic, she described her father as being “musical,” but they never went into the business. And her 94-year-old grandfather “still enjoys singing along to Frank Sinatra.”

At school Osborne would do plays, and she was lucky enough to have a bunch of singing lessons. “My parents would drive me back from rehearsals and they really encouraged my passion,” she said.

I’m lucky to have seen several of her stage performances and she has always stood out. When I first saw her in Fiddler on the Roof, I remember writing down her name and made a point of keeping up with her career, as I do with scores of other future stars.

Osborne’s prepping, whenever she gets the opportunity, for her Broadway debut next year. She has read and re-read Othello to help her get inside Desdemona’s head and she has explored the psychology of love, jealousy, evil and race, the themes Shakespeare explored in the tragedy. She also visited the Imperial War Museum to help her try and understand men of war who are at war with themselves.

A video call is being planned when all the roles have been cast (some exciting names are being talked about) for the company to “meet” ahead of rehearsals early in the new year.

“I’ve been told to be ready to be in New York from January. I can’t wait to meet them and dive into it,” Osborne enthused.

“We’re delighted to have Molly,” Moreland said.

Othello will open at a yet to be announced Shubert theater in the spring.