Interview: Kathryn Gallagher and Natalie Margolin Talk About the Importance of Female Empowerment in All Nighter

Kathryn Gallagher has been seen on the small screen in Gossip Girl and on Broadway in Jagged Little Pill, and now she’s gracing the stage again in the 12-week run of All Nighter, written by Natalie Margolin.

Gallagher stars alongside Alyah Chanelle Scott, Havana Rose Liu, Julia Lester, and Kristine Frøseth, who are currently bringing the play to life for audiences at the MCC Theater in New York.

Longtime best friends Gallagher and Margolin talked to TheaterMania about the inspiration behind the female-centric play that they hope leaves audiences pondering the topics of friendship, loyalty, and connection.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How did you come up with the idea for this play? Was it based on your real-life experiences in college?

Natalie: All Nighter is about a group of young women at a small liberal arts college who are sort of contorting and twisting in order to remain a unit, and it’s essentially asking what’s the cost of that? I went to a small liberal arts college, so it’s certainly inspired by a certain processing of that environment and experience. It delves into the complexity of female friendships during their senior year of college, and it focuses on that moment when your identity is more intertwined with a group than it is in the individual.

The cast is a powerhouse of five talented women. Was that an intentional choice?

Natalie: That was so intentional. My goal and dream and all I want to do is write complex roles for women in the theater. That is why I started writing plays to begin with, so this play is an absolute dream, and they are all so committed, magical, and giving their all. I’m interested in female dynamics, female friendships, the complexities and toxicities that exist there in all the in all its beauty, joy and pain. So yeah, having all women is totally what I intended and wanted and what I was interested in investigating.

Kathryn, can you touch a bit on your character in All Nighter?

Kathryn: I play the role of Jacqueline. She is someone who views her friends as family and is driven by love and connection. When you’re at that sort of very precious age, you are in a way navigating and discovering more than ever where you belong, what belonging means, and what connection means. Jacqueline is just trying to hold tight to what feels safe and what feels loving and what feels connecting and, you know, she’s fun.

Have you been able to bring any elements of yourself into your role as Jacqueline?

Kathryn: Definitely. There’s an aspect of yourself that you bring into every character you play. For Jacqueline, she is investigating her queerness, certainly at that age I was straight, so she’s way ahead of me. I too, like Jacqueline, live and die by my friends. I’m someone who relies heavily on the people around me. I connect to her constant pursuit of connection, and that is definitely something neat that we share.

How do you think this show is different from others playing in New York right now?

Kathryn: As an artist who reads a lot of scripts, I’ve never read female characters, especially a group of female friends, that are so accurately portrayed. Natalie has created this beautiful world showcasing how when you’re in a friend group you have your own lexicon, your own dialogue, your own sort of secret language, your own rules of a friendship, even unspoken rules, and that has created such a powerful and clear understanding of who these girls are and what they mean to each other. I’ve been loving this script for six years, and I’ve never seen anything come quite close to creating such an accurate portrayal of being a young woman.

Natalie: Something that’s exciting about the theatrical landscape right now is that there are a lot of plays centering women on Broadway and off Broadway, which isn’t always the case. I’m proud and grateful and excited that we’re joining the list of this season that has a lot of female centered stories onstage, and I feel really moved that we get to join that list.

What do you want audience members to take away from the show? How do you want them to feel?

Natalie: Wow, that’s a good, hard question. I mean, questioning and pondering how we love each other and how we support each other. The central question that I remain interested in, and that I hope is gleaned, is the question of what is the cost of remaining a unit? Like, what is sacrificed when we work hard to remain together, even when we’re sacrificing parts of ourselves?

Kathryn: I hope that people walk away and have interesting dinner conversations about it.

Natalie: Yes, exactly. The dream is that people go to dinner and have a lot to talk about. There’s a feast of things for them to chew on, but my dream is to create theater that asks questions—I’m not trying to serve you a bunch of answers.