Two And A Half Men star Holland Taylor is thrilled her new one-woman show has finally hit the stage - because the project has been six years in the making.
The 68 year old has been crafting and researching new play Ann since former Texas governor Ann Richards' passing in 2006 and Taylor confesses she often wondered if her ideas would ever come to fruition.
She tells Reuters, "I had a lot of creative feelings about her... I had to do something with my feelings about this loss... I was literally driving to work at my television show one day and I had to pull off the highway onto the service road (when I heard the news). I had the idea it should be a play because of her liveliness and her contact with the audience."
Taylor admits playing such a sharp-witted character has had its positives - it has helped her to find strength in tragic Richards' optimistic attitude.
She adds, "She was not a person who looked back. Ever. She did not revisit things. She was rolling along, like a wheel that goes under and then over. Under and over. But always moving forward. If she fell, she fell forward. And that is not the way I am. I get very upset. I can get very waylaid. I get blue. I can become chicken little. And now when I do, I think, 'What would Ann Richards think of this behaviour?'"
Ann will run through 15 January (12) at Washington, D.C.'s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.