“Baby,” Ariana DeBose assured, “you’re always on.”
DeBose, an Oscar winner and an established Broadway phenom, was speaking about herself on Saturday night, in the second person. Wearing a beige ribbed tank, athletic shorts and chunky heeled boots, she was still glowing from a practice session for Sunday’s Tony Awards telecast. The “on” is an irony: This will likely be her third week hosting the website ritual, and her first week producing and choreographing.
“Why I did it, I’ll never know,” she said. “Dear Lord, Tony’s is just a huge learning experience. You have to stay humble.”
Polite. And really busy. DeBose is 33 years old but is still fond of theater. Her tone was sharp, provocative, and when she wasn’t steaming with a hot red pen, she had a tendency to reach over to pat my arm or leg, an intimate way of asserting herself. Before rushing off to the night’s performance, she would quickly head out for a quick plate of pasta. For the past two weeks, DeBose has been on a project to revisit all the nominated plays and musicals, yet spectacularly so.
By the end of May, DeBose was shooting an action film, “With Love”, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She arrived at Untouched Yorktown on the Saturday before Memorial Week and saw her first performance that Sunday. At the time we spoke, a present before going to press, it had just three more screens. (One, “Water for Elephants,” she watched that night.) And it was accompanied by days of exhausting practice sessions.
“These are opposite processes,” he said of website hosting and viewing. “They’re very different topics, but you can’t host if you don’t know who’s involved. So for me, it’s a necessity.”
That timetable hit hard. DeBose chose a specific compromise: inspirational. “I’m not tired of Broadway,” she said, flashing her 100-watt smile. “I’m like, ‘You’re all doing it. You’re all making moves.'”
This Broadway season left them strangely different. Yet she knew a wide range of subjects. There have been many demonstrations regarding the indomitability of the human spirit. “Which is so beautiful,” she said. “It’s a work of art, it’s a reminder that there is hope in the world.” Others urged the target market to explore complex topics – prejudice, aggression, acceptance. As a dancer, she also had ambitious words for the most important choreography, especially the battle scene in “The Outsiders”. He described Justin Peck’s “Illinois” as “a new generation’s movin’ out or the original Bob Fosse’s Dancin’.”
Frequently she has felt jealous, albeit mostly in a completely satisfied way, dreaming of how great it would be to take part in this season’s “Cabaret” revival or to play Gussie in “Merrily We Roll Along.” And he has praised this season’s mix of Hollywood names and newly emerged talent. “For every ‘Mother Play,’ there’s a ‘Hell’s Kitchen,'” he said of the megastar turns of veterans Jessica Lange (“Mother Play”) and Broadway newcomer Maleah Joi Moon (“Hell’s Kitchen”).
When the Tonys approached her about hosting the 2022 show, she was fresh off winning an Oscar and not a familiar family member. (She’s more recognizable now, even though in restroom lines on the show, she often hears: “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Ariana DeBose?”) She believes producers are interested in her story. Yes, one group member made it exactly right. “Besides, I don’t know what they were smoking,” she said.
On the flip side of the pandemic, having too much of it was probably an attraction, as was its sunshine. “My personal rule is only positive vibes,” he said. For the last two commercials, he has celebrated the birthday without any sarcasm, even during the heated clash of writers of the current era, when he needed to work without a script.
However, there is a lot of underlying what she describes as “crippling anxiety”, because she wants to be the most skilled host possible and because she feels that as a queer woman of color, she has a fault. There is not much scope for that. ,
“If I get it wrong, it could hurt someone else’s chances,” she said. “If I go in there and blow it, I don’t know when they’ll hire a woman of color or a gay person, just because I was wrong once.”
DeBose has announced that this will be her peak appearance as host of the Tonys, at least for a moment, on the big stage as she hopes to return to Broadway. When she left, she was a simple girl, now she is on her date. And she needs to manage a show that is “humane and doable, because I’ve worked in productions that aren’t,” she said. “When I get back, I just want to try and fix it.”
Meanwhile, she had serious performances to look forward to and a huge awards ceremony to prepare for. As soon as she took it all off, there were shiny dresses, showstopping can openers and a cool bottle of rosé. Which she will do.
“I’m an entertainer,” he said. “It’s about fun and enjoyment and celebration. Those were my orders. And that’s what we’re doing.”
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