Walking into Jen Tullock’s New York City apartment feels less like meeting a TV star and more like dropping by your queer best friend’s place on a Sunday afternoon. It’s warm and lived-in with artful decor, a quiet playlist humming, and Tullock padding around asking if I’ve eaten. Within minutes, the chatter turns to Kentucky: favorite Bourbons (she calls out Russell’s as a favorite), the gay migration to Paducah, which distilleries are the gayest (facts), and who still makes proper chicken and dumplings. It’s cozy and conversational in that uniquely Kentucky way.

A Love Letter to Kentucky, Faith, and Queer Identity

I was there to talk about her play, “Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God“, which I had been blown away by the night before and is just about to wrap a twice-extended run at Playwrights Horizons, in Manhattan’s Theater District, on November 16. 

If you only know Jen from her role as Devon on Apple TV’s Severance, you’ve gotten a glimpse at her incredible range, but this stage work hits different. Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God is bold, tender, and so very Kentucky. The story focuses on a queer writer, Frances, who returns to her Louisville roots hoping to eliminate any legal pushback from the folks she discusses in her bestselling memoir, but once home, she’s forced to reckon with the people, faith, and memories that shaped her. 

What sets it apart from other reflections on growing up gay in a deeply red state is that it isn’t an escape narrative pointing the blame on the “ignorant rednecks” that we’ve seen too often. It’s a love letter. Underneath the pain and trauma is an unmistakable love and protectiveness that causes her to rethink forgiveness, faith, and blame. 

“I have met more bigoted people in coastal progressive communities who are immovable in their worldview, but because of their perceived education or their perceived worldliness, they think, oh, I’m an open-minded and malleable person,” she explains. 

The play is a sharp, funny, and deeply human unraveling of memory and truth, with Tullock artfully playing all twelve characters herself: preachers, mothers, lovers, and brothers. “The play isn’t about leaving the bad place for the good one,” she says. “It’s about learning that harm and holiness can exist anywhere.”

Jen Tullock. Photo by Jordan Best

Finding Grace and Humor in Queer Southern Storytelling

When asked what parts of Kentucky she carries with her, Tullock says, “Oh, my God, the food, Appalachian music. I think the working class history of the state at large. But also, my dad’s family is from Paducah, and then further back, Appalachia proper, like, they’re from the sticks.” She continues, “And I think that there is such compassionate and folksy Americana in the state of Kentucky.” 

Tullock talks about Kentucky, and the South, the way so many of us do — complicated, protective, and proud. 

“There is an inherently kind and community-driven and plucky vibe to Kentucky that is so much a part of my DNA,” she says. “My 90-year-old grandmother from Little Rock asked me my pronouns last time I saw her. She was like, ‘I just found out about misgendering people and I wanted to make sure I’ve never misgendered you.’” Jen continues, “I point to that part of Kentucky, and just that part of the country in general, where there is, depending on what household you go to, generally, a willingness to learn and grow that is rooted in the warmth of that part of the country that I don’t find in other places.”

It was on a missionary trip to Ethiopia in her homeschooled junior year of high school that Tullock came out to herself, only to enter public school for the first time her senior year. With her parents away in Poland, it was her English teacher who took her under her wing, going so far as to offer Jen a place to live so she wouldn’t be alone during this time. 

“Yeah, it’s always an English teacher,” she laughed. “I saw a tweet the other day that was like, ‘Oh, you’re queer. Were you best friends with your art teacher or English teacher in school?’ And then mine adopted me. So when I go home to Kentucky, it’s to her house.” 

Twenty years later, she still finds herself switching between her various homes. 

“When I’m with my friends, they’re like, ‘Oh my God, I was raised in LA. What was Kentucky like?’ I’m like, it was fucking great and you don’t understand,” she says. We have the best bourbon, and there’s amazing music, and the Ohio River is really cool, and you don’t get it. And then when I’m home, I’m like, you guys, you can’t be drinking Diet Coke anymore. It’s so bad for your digestive tract. I just turn into a fucking asshole. So it’s like I kind of code-switch between the two in a way that I’m trying to marry them now as I’m older. And trying to be as authentic as possible. But you know, I. Both places. I’ve been forged in the fires in both places.”

Jen Tullock. Photo by Jordan Best.

Bringing Kentucky’s Heart to a National Stage

When asked about bringing the show home, she didn’t hesitate. Touring plans are in motion with London as the first stop, and Kentucky is on her wish list. Not as a victory lap, but as an offering. She wants audiences here to feel safe and seen inside it. 

When I asked what she hopes folks carry out of the theater, she said something that stuck with me: “healing isn’t a straight line. You think you’ve buried the beach ball; it pops back up.” 

Before I left, I promised her a bourbon tour at one of our queerest distilleries next time she’s in Kentucky, while she offered to hold my luggage until I needed to be at the airport — embodying Southern hospitality like Kentuckians do. However it lands, “Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God” is unmistakably one of ours: a story born from the Bluegrass, and told with love for our people.

“Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God” runs through November 16 at Playwright’s Theater located at 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036. Limited seats are still available and can be purchased here.

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