Ketanji Brown Jackson and Matt Damon once shared the stage together — and she did better than he did.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the Supreme Court justice recalled being in a drama class with the Oscar winner when they were both attending Harvard University. She explained that the two never did an actual performance together but were paired as scene partners.
“He’s not going to remember this, of course, but [it was] for Waiting for Godot,” she told Norah O’Donnell. “The reason why I remember it is because he was already kind of well-known around campus and off campus, so it was kind of exciting to be his scene partner for a particular class.”
When asked what happened in the scene, she shared that they had to memorize a part of a two-person scene together. “And at the end, the professor said, ‘Ketanji, you were very good. Matt, we’ll talk,’” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I was better than Matt Damon in a scene.’”
Jackson previously mentioned she was in the class with Damon but provided more detail on the CBS morning show. The Associated Press reached out to the award-winning actor and screenwriter at the time to see if he remembered her, and he did not, but he added: “That’s so cool!”
The Supreme Court associate justice graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government in 1992. Four years later, she graduated from the Massachusetts Ivy League with a juris doctor degree.
Damon, on the other hand, ended up dropping out of Harvard 12 credits short of graduating in order to star in Geronimo: An American Legend. He went on to star in several Oscar-nominated titles and won the Academy Award alongside frequent collaborator and friend Ben Affleck for their Good Will Hunting screenplay a few years later.
