Rae Gray
Rae Gray is an actor whose credits span television, film, and stage.
She's currently playing "Pastor Riga" in New Theatre Project's The Shape of the Bones at Theatre Wit, preparing to take on the role of "Jane" in Job at Writers Theatre, and can be seen in Season 8, Episode 10 of The Rookie.
She joined me via Zoom to discuss all of that, as well as her overall career.
To watch the interview with Rae Gray, click the play button below (or click here to open the video player in a new tab/window).
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New Theatre Project's The Shape of the Bones at Theatre Wit in Chicago, Ill. runs through March 22, 2026.
More information about that can be found on the New Theatre Project website.
Job at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, Ill. runs from April 9 through June 14, 2026.
More information about that can be found on the Writers Theatre website.
Season 8, Episode 10 of The Rookie, entitled His Name Was Martin, is currently streaming on Hulu.
Rae Gray is a supporter of World Central Kitchen.
If you'd like to donate, you can do so here, via their website.
Please note that interviewees select their own charity. Any charities mentioned or linked are neither vetted, nor endorsed, by the author or this site.
Mike Reflects
I think I said two things to Rae before this interview started.
The first was that some of the questions are going to be a bit unusual, as I had some unique "How'd they do that?" questions.
The second was that this interview was going to be all over the place, in terms of flow.
Luckily, she was game for both.
Sometimes, the questions I want to ask are such that there's a really smooth segue between all of them. Sometimes, the conversation goes in a completely different direction and I decide that the new direction is way more interesting than anything I was going to ask.
And sometimes, I have an interview like this, where I want to get to know the person and their approach to their craft, as it spans several topics that ultimately have nothing to do with each other.
Rae's name first caught my eye when she received the Jeff Award last year for her role in Prayer for the French Republic, since I cover the Jeff Awards as I'm able. (Unfortunately, I had to miss last year's due to a medical procedure.)
Last week, I was scrolling through the current and upcoming shows in the area, and her name caught my eye again when I saw she had the lead role in New Theatre Project's The Shape of the Bones, as well as the upcoming production of Job at Writer's Theatre.
It took me a bit of internal deliberation to decide if I wanted to try to talk to her now, while The Shape of the Bones was still fresh or if I wanted to wait until she was settled into Job.
When I pulled up her resume and noticed that she was scheduled to appear in this week's episode of The Rookie, I had my answer.
One of the things I miss most about doing this in radio was getting pitches for interviews that were going to be on an episode of prime-time television that week.
Getting to combine that with a discussion of two local plays, as well as Amazon Prime's A League of Their Own, and everything else Rae has done in her career was a real treat.
Fun fact: this interview, like most of my interviews, was originally scheduled to be 15-20 minutes. I reached out to Rae the day before and asked if she'd be open to extending, since I wasn't sure if that would be enough time to get to everything.
Luckily for me (and all of you, even if the interview gave you a bit of whiplash), she was game for that, too.