Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Surprising Harvard Drama Class Moment With Matt Damon

Jackson and Damon, scene partners, did a reading from 'Waiting for Godot.' It didn't go as you would expect.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson revealed in a Sept. 1 interview that she had the acting bug long before she made history as the first Black woman to sit in the high court.

In fact, she told CBS Sunday Morning that during her time at Harvard University, she was paired up with renowned actor Matt Damon in a drama class.

Damon, who is well known for his role in the Bourne films, was in the same drama class as Jackson before he became an Oscar nominee for acting and a winner for co-writing Good Will Hunting.

Jackson told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell that the two performed a scene from the play Waiting for Godot.

“We were never in an actual performance, but we were in a drama class together and we were paired as scene partners for… and he’s not going to remember this, of course,” Jackson said. “The reason why I remember it is because he [Damon] 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.

“As I recall, we had to do the scene, we had to memorize a part of it, and we did it together, and it’s a two-person play, a two-person scene,” Jackson recalled. “And at the end, the professor said, ‘Ketanji, you were very good. Matt, we’ll talk.'”

Jackson added, “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I was better than Matt Damon in a scene.’”

Damon left Harvard without graduating, but did OK, starring in a string of big movies such as Good Will Hunting, The Martian, and Saving Private Ryan. He told the Associated Press in 2022 that he did not recall his performance with Jackson but that the connection was still “so cool.”