Annaleigh Ashford wiled away the months of COVID-19 lockdown above a Brooklyn grocery store.
The Tony-winning actress told Page Six that she spent March through most of July in her one-bedroom apartment with her husband, Joe Tapper, and their 4-year-old son, Jack.
“We don’t have any outdoor space, we live above a grocery store, so our little guy learned about the virus right away,” she said. “He learned how to wear a mask so he could walk outside so it’s been a total challenge. But again we’re so grateful to have our health and yes we have a 4-year-old who slightly went bananas.
“At the beginning, we didn’t know how it was spreading so we would be like, ‘Excuse me, excuse me, could you please give us some space?’ at the grocery store line outside our door,” she continued. “It was around the block. We ended up buying him a scooter and we would walk to Gowanus, that’s where he learned to ride a scooter, next to the Gowanus canal.”
She only left Brooklyn to shoot her new sitcom, “B Positive,” in Los Angeles. In the series, she plays Gina, a free-spirited gal who volunteers to donate a kidney to Drew (Thomas Middleditch), an uptight divorced therapist who is a former school pal.
Organ donation is actually a subject that the 35-year-old actress feels strongly about. Her mother is the recipient of two corneas.
”She would be blind if she hadn’t got those donations,” she revealed. “When my son was born we donated the cord blood, it’s such an easy way to donate. I am super pro-organ donation.”
Ashford, who is currently in LA shooting the Chuck Lorre-produced series, is grateful to have the TV work and also knows how lucky she is to be a Broadway star.
“I think about it a lot lately because it’s so heartbreaking,” the “Masters of Sex” star said. “The volume of outrageously gifted artists that are out of work is just overwhelming right now. Amazingly they’re finding a way to make art, to pivot and look ahead to the future and that’s a great reminder that artists are always in a state of unknown so we know how to pivot.”
“B Positive” airs Thursdays on CBS.
