For Shailene Woodley, Every Day Is Christmas

“Christmas gifts are hard, man!” the actress Shailene Woodley said, with an expletive for emphasis. This was on a recent afternoon, just two days before Christmas, and Woodley (“Big Little Lies,” “Ferrari”) was striding around Union Square in Manhattan, in search of some last-minute presents. She had already warned her family that the gifts might arrive late this year.

“I told everyone Santa’s coming in January,” she said. “Sorry.”

Then again, Woodley began celebrating Christmas early this year. And she hasn’t stopped.

Woodley, 33, is starring on Broadway in “Cult of Love,” a fraught family drama written by Leslye Headland. The play, directed by Trip Cullman, spends a tense Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the Dahl family, a Christian clan that takes their figgy pudding very seriously. Making her stage debut, Woodley plays Diana, the baby of the family, a young mother with the voice of an angel and powerful charismatic gifts. (Or possibly, psychosis.) Nearly every night and twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays, through Feb. 2, Woodley dons holiday pajamas, sings carols and sits for slow-cooked lamb.

Growing up outside Los Angeles, she began acting early — appearing in commercials at 5, booking episodic roles a few years later — but Woodley had never done live theater before. Up until a few years ago, she thought she never would. Public speaking (Woodley is an advocate for environmental causes) helped her overcome crippling stage fright, and Nicole Kidman, her co-star on the glossy HBO trauma soap “Big Little Lies,” convinced her that theater was a singular way to develop her craft. So when she switched to a new talent agency, she asked her representatives to find a play for her. The role of Diana intrigued her and the chance to act alongside Broadway veterans like Mare Winningham and David Rasche was an added gift.

Yet even among veteran actors Woodley holds her own.

“Woodley nails Diana’s mean-waif combustibility,” the New Yorker’s theater critic, Helen Shaw, wrote.

Woodley arrived for a pre-shopping herbal tea at NewsBar, a neighborhood cafe where she knows the staff by name and has arranged Broadway tickets for them. Wearing a shiny Moncler puffer and boots, she had the natural radiance of someone who has studied herbalism and endorsed beet lipstick.

Not at all mean and at 5 feet 8 inches tall, not precisely waify, Woodley is earnest and unaffected in person. Frank when discussing her work, she is more circumspect when questions about that work intersect with her personal life. Despite Woodley’s best efforts, her relationships have occasionally become tabloid fodder. She now records all of her interviews, protection against being misquoted.

In some ways this has brought her closer to Diana. Though Woodley describes herself as deeply spiritual, she doesn’t share Diana’s strict Christian faith. “I didn’t grow up religious,” she said. “Our faith truly was love, as ambiguous as that is.” But she does share Diana’s fear of being misjudged.

“Being misunderstood is one of the worst feelings a human can experience because we all, at the end of the day, want to be seen and accepted,” she said.

Every night a character puts Diana in her place, and every night the audience at the Helen Hayes Theater applauds. In that moment Woodley remembers all of the times she has been misunderstood, all of the times she has misunderstood others. “The feel of that breaks my heart, the feel of the audience clapping against Diana, it’s this existential sadness that I do carry in me,” she said.

But she enjoys performing onstage. She felt nervous during an invited dress rehearsal for friends and family, and then the nerves went away. And she thrives in the presence of a live audience, an energy, she said, that is “just so real.” The role of Diana is demanding — it involves a nervous breakdown — but Woodley trusts that if she just relaxes and listens, the breakdown will come. So far it has.

Still, the schedule of rehearsal and previews had been somewhat punishing. “If Santa could bring me sleep this year, I would be very grateful,” she said. Her family had been in town for opening, which meant that she was behind on her errands. First, she wanted to stop by a plant store in search of a money tree for a friend. The plant’s intertwined trunks were a symbol of interdependency. “You want to depend on each other but be your own roots, your own trunk,” Woodley said.

The store on University Place had two trees. But they were flimsy and expensive. It wasn’t worth it, even for a symbol. In California, nature is sturdy and easily accessed. In New York, it’s more elusive, though Woodley insists the city has plenty of wildness.

“Because of the humanity,” she said as she walked to the holiday market at Union Square. “Sometimes I look at people and I’m like, ‘Would you be the lion? Or would you be the antelope?’”

In the market, Woodley was the antelope. “It’s overwhelming,” she said. “How do you choose?” She was distracted by some shiny glassware. “Oh my God, these cups!”

She stroked and rejected some hanging cat toys. Her cats would destroy them in seconds, she said. Then she paused at some socks printed with classic New York iconography — a pretzel, a pigeon. They might make good gifts for the security team at the theater. “Socks are nice, right?” she said. “Somebody gives me a pair of nice socks, I’m like, yes.” Still she worried that they might not be warm enough. Would a scarf be better?

“I never know what to get anyone,” she said.

She bought a pack of flower teas that would make good stocking stuffers. The blue lotus, she said, was good for lucid dreaming. The market was growing on her. “This is fun. Why have I not walked through this?” She stopped at a stand of wooden toys. “Oh my God, the little pool table!”

She wandered out of the holiday market to the adjoining farmer’s market. She needed some meat and vegetables for a trip upstate. A stand selling products made from alpaca wool caught her eye. There was a rack of socks in assorted colors. They looked very warm.

“Survival socks,” she said, reading the label. These would be perfect for the security team. “Thank you for being here,” she said to the stall’s owner. “You just made my day.”

Woodley smiled. Maybe Santa wouldn’t be so late after all.

“I’m getting all the Christmas gifts I was supposed to get,” she said. “It’s very exciting.”