‘I could not get through the script without crying’: Adrien Brody talks to the death row survivor who he’s playing on the London stage

In ​1​982 Nick Yarris was wrongly convicted of a murder he didn’t commit​ and spent 22 years in prison. Here, he and the Oscar-winning actor – back on stage for the first time in 30 years – reflect on bringing Yarris’s life story to the theatre

The rehearsal space for the Donmar Warehouse theatre is a scruffy, gymnasium-scale, subterranean cavern in Covent Garden. Strewn around, on Monday morning last week, are some telltale signs of stressful, long days: scrunched-up packs of bourbon biscuits and custard creams, and scattered pages of heavily inked script; also, intriguingly, four (empty) boxes of heavy-duty handcuffs. Dominating the room is a makeshift stage that looks like a boxing ring without ropes and measures 3.5 metres by 3.2 metres, almost the exact dimensions of a cell on death row.

Nick Yarris, a power-bald man of 63 with high cheekbones and a scar on his chin, stands in one corner and starts pacing diagonally. “One… two… three… ” he says, counting his steps, his work boots making a resonant clunk as he walks. “Jay Smith used to be in the cell above me. And he was a very famous case too, the Susan Reinert murder and all this shit. But he would pace all day and he walked seven steps one way… ”

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