There’s a lot of upside to being Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the 39-year-old American actor. Off the top of one’s head: sharing scenes with Eddie Murphy, Meryl Streep, Steve Martin. Or, I don’t know, those crazy few weeks in the winter of 2024, when Randolph won a Golden Globe, then a Bafta, and then an Oscar for her supporting turn in the Alexander Payne film The Holdovers.
One of the unanticipated kickbacks, though, is that Randolph has become the Imelda Marcos of hotel slippers. We meet on the first really cold day of this autumn at the Rosewood London in Covent Garden, when she wears a fabulous short-sleeved dress with a floral motif and pleated skirt, and has pointy, immaculate nails. It’s only a few minutes in that I notice her very glam outfit is completed, like a furiously paddling swan, by a pair of those fluffy, white, towelling slippers that fancy hotels give away to guests.
“I have to pace myself,” she says, “because I have a premiere tonight.” Randolph is in town to promote Eternity, a very superior romcom, in which she stars with Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen. “I have to be on my feet for five hours.” Hence prioritising comfort now.
In recent years, Randolph has amassed a collection of, she estimates, “maybe 75, I would say just under 100,” pairs of slippers, all from different hotels and she has developed a connoisseur’s appreciation for their particulars. “To the naked eye you would say these are generic,” she says, gesturing to the Rosewoods. “But they’re super-lush and they fit, which seems silly, but that hardly ever happens.”
When I ask what she likes about a hotel slipper, she mulls the question over for a moment. “They look nice, they’re chic,” she says. “But I think these slippers are a reflection of my personality. Even being in this very prestigious, elite, exclusive career, there’s still a major groundedness in me. And when I am, quote, unquote, off-duty and not working, I’m just a regular girl.”
That groundedness must have been tested in recent times. Randolph had success from the off: a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, her first role was in the stage production of Ghost: the Musical, first in the West End in 2011 and then on Broadway, where she earned herself a Tony nomination. Her film breakthrough came when she starred opposite Eddie Murphy in the 2019 comedy-drama Dolemite Is My Name. This piqued the attention of another comic legend, Steve Martin, who brought Randolph in as a regular (the police officer Detective Williams) on his Disney+ series Only Murders in the Building. She received an Emmy nomination for that, too.
There’s still a major groundedness in me. And when I am, quote, unquote, off-duty and not working, I’m just a regular girl
But The Holdovers experience was something else. In the film she played Mary, a bereaved mother and cafeteria manager stuck in an elite New England boarding school over Christmas 1970 with a misanthropic teacher (Paul Giamatti) and an abrasive student (Dominic Sessa). It was a subtle, wary performance, all sideways glances and small gestures, against a (largely unspoken) backdrop of racial and class prejudices, and the Vietnam War.
“I tried to hone in on the essence of this woman as the everywoman,” she says of Mary. “It is a very real thing to live with grief and to have to go about your day-to-day. But these are often the hardest things to portray. It’s easier when you have all the theatrics and the sound effects and the costumes and the prosthetics and all that other stuff. And that’s all well and good, but to maintain humanity at the core is a tricky thing. So I really, really enjoyed that.”
Audiences and critics responded, too. One of the most surreal moments with The Holdovers came at the Bafta awards in London in 2024. Randolph had already won best supporting actress at the Golden Globes in Los Angeles, but she knew taking a prize over here would be much more of a challenge. “I remember being in the car,” she recalls, “and my team saying to me, ‘Hey, listen, if you don’t get it… This is the one where they tend to give it to their folks.’ And that’s understandable. So when that happened, I was like, ‘This is weird. Wow! Thank you so so much!’”
A year and a half on, the night of the Oscars still feels like a fever dream, “out-of-body, even now,” she says. “I don’t even remember it. They say your name, and you’re like, ‘I’m gone. I’m out!’ It’s wild when people introduce me in that way, it’s like your guys’ version of being a Sir Benjamin Kingsley or whatever. I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that didn’t happen’ like, legit.”
“Not that I forget,” she goes on. “I just don’t carry it with me. It’s still very, very, very new to me.” Fortunately, some friends have been on hand to offer advice. “I was talking to Meryl Streep when we were filming Only Murders,” she says. “She was like: ‘My accolades precede me before I even walk into a room, almost as if they are several feet in front of me. That’s the first thing people encounter before I even open my mouth. But I’m here.’ Now I know what she’s talking about.”
Perhaps the main focus for Randolph from here on is “intentionality”. She is aware that her voice has a force in the film industry that it didn’t before. Projects will be more compelling – to producers, to audiences – with her name attached. But the quality has to back the ideas up: she doesn’t want to be the actor who followed an Oscar with a string of duds. “I can’t get away with as much, not that I did,” she says, smiling. “Things have more of a weight now.”
One project she plans to develop is a biopic of the opera singer Leontyne Price, a legendary diva who in the 1960s became the first African-American soprano to go international.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Randolph’s main creative outlet was singing, first at church before being trained classically in opera. “That’s a special gift that I have that I haven’t really dived into,” she says. “And I thought [the Price film] would be a great way to blend all my worlds together.”
‘I tried to hone in on the essence of this woman as the everywoman’: Randolph starring in The Holdovers
More leftfield, Randolph is also currently developing a series with the BBC where she travels the world meeting women chefs. “I want to create almost a female-focused Chef’s Table,” she says, referring to the hit Netflix series. “Because what I loved about Chef’s Table was the psychology and ideology of a chef and their process of being or becoming who they are. But I think it’s a very male and misogynistic industry that still feels quite antiquated.”
Randolph has already shot segments on the Amalfi Coast and in the Caribbean. “Chefs are the opposite of actors,” she says. “They work really, really hard, and it’s a thankless job, and they get no praise. They tend to have really quiet and mild and meek demeanours, but when talking about food, they come alive and explode. Whereas actors are explosive, and usually when talking about the craft are really quiet and meek. It’s fascinating to me to see those polarities.”
Before that, there’s Eternity. A love triangle set in the afterlife, the premise of the film is that, when we die, our souls are dispatched to a way station called the Junction. There – reborn as the age where we were at peak happiness in our lives – each of us has a week to decide where, and with whom, to spend eternity. Randolph plays what’s called an “afterlife coordinator” who has to explain this head-scratching concept to Larry (Miles Teller), who hopes to be reunited with his wife (Elizabeth Olsen).
You will cry, you will probably laugh, and part of the fun of Eternity is that you will be confronted with existential thoughts. I ask Randolph the obvious question: what age was she happiest? She has an answer ready. “I think now,” she replies, “because I have more of a perspective on things. And I feel so grateful to have amassed so much already, and it genuinely feels like it’s just getting better. Yes, things happen. Life is difficult. There are ups and downs, but when I truly look back on it, where I’ve arrived at currently, I’m quite proud and enjoy it.”
Next obvious question: where would she choose to spend eternity? Again, Randolph is prepared, picking a stay on a palatial superyacht run by either the Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons hotel groups, which have launched in recent years. She’s thinking spas, amazing food, occasional hop-offs at chichi destinations around the Mediterranean. “And I’ve never done a cruise in my life, because the other type of cruises, I don’t think that’s my bag,” she says. “But a luxury, intimate cruise? Woo-hoo. What a life!”
What would the slipper situation be?
This part she hasn’t thought through yet. “You know, they’d be lovely,” she decides. “It would just be a closet of all my favourite slippers from all over the world. And I get to pick every day, whichever one I wear.”
Eternity is out in UK cinemas 5 December
Additional image by Alamy