“Theatre Can’t Miss This Moment”: An Interview with Audra McDonald

The actress on color-blind casting, virtual performance, and learning how to trust her own power.
An illustrated portrait of Audra Mcdonald slightly smiling with an off shoulder blue dress.
Illustration by Nhung Lê

Audra McDonald came out of Juilliard in 1993, a twenty-two-year-old with a lyric soprano as pristine as sterling silver, and quickly forged one of the most celebrated careers in Broadway history. A year out of school, she was cast as Carrie Pipperidge in a Lincoln Center revival of “Carousel,” in what was hailed as a breakthrough in “color-blind casting,” and won her first Tony Award for the role. More Tonys followed, for “Master Class,” “Ragtime,” and “A Raisin in the Sun.” And then more, for “Porgy and Bess” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” in which she played a broken Billie Holiday. She remains the only performer ever to win six Tonys and the only one to win in all four available categories.

McDonald’s plan for this summer was to play Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” but, like all live theatre, the production was derailed by the pandemic. Instead, she’s been quarantined at her home in Westchester, with her husband, Will Swenson (her co-star in a 2007 production of “110 in the Shade”), their four children (three from previous marriages and a toddler, Sally), plus their eleven-year-old dog and “about five hundred frogs on the outside,” McDonald said recently. Nevertheless, she has not been idle. In April, she appeared, along with Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski, in a memorable rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” as part of an online concert for Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday. This month, she performed a virtual concert from a space off her garage which she calls the “Chill Room.”

And then there’s the racial reckoning that has spilled over from the Black Lives Matter protests into the theatre world. In June, McDonald co-founded Black Theatre United, along with performers such as Phylicia Rashad, Wendell Pierce, and Billy Porter. At its inaugural town hall, McDonald moderated a conversation with Sherrilyn Ifill, of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund. When I reached McDonald by Zoom, she was in her teen stepson’s bedroom; the “Chill Room” was undergoing an emergency chimney repair, and Sally could be heard singing in the hallway. “As much as we try to stay energetic for her, we just can’t replicate a three-year-old’s energy,” McDonald said. “Although we did just find some caterpillars in our garden, and we’re going to watch them turn into butterflies.” Our conversation—about her own metamorphoses, from a demoralized student at Juilliard, where she survived a suicide attempt, to a Broadway eminence to a community advocate—has been edited and condensed.

The theatre, like many industries, has been thrust into a big, belated moment of racial reckoning. As one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, Black theatre artists in America, how have you been thinking about what your role should be?

You need to do what you can to make more space. Every time that we are able to get into the room, I think it’s your job to create more space. I can’t tell you how many young African-American women, students or whatnot, come up to me and say, “I watched you as a kid, and I remember thinking, If she’s doing Broadway, then I can do it. And I can do it as a soprano. I don’t have to do it in the way that society would mainly see me—a sassy beltress.”

Did you have people like that growing up?

For me, Lena Horne and Diahann Carroll, of course. Ella Fitzgerald. Obviously, she never did Broadway, but that was Ella’s voice. That was no one else’s voice except Ella’s. And, then, Lillias White I just adored. I had the album of “The Wiz,” which I listened to over and over again. I never thought that I would have the career that I ended up having, but I could at least be there. There was at least space to be taken up by Black women.

I’ve always used my voice to call attention to issues that I thought were important. I’ve been on the board of Covenant House for four or five years now, doing work with homeless youth, trying to give them shelter and education and food and dignity. With Black Theatre United, it’s about all of us saying, “We can’t sit on the sidelines. We can lament everything going on, but how can we as a group effect change in some grander way than just on our own?” As Sherrilyn Ifill said in that town hall, “Everybody has to use the tools in your hand.”

So much of the conversation has been about institutional change. What does that look like to you?

When you look at Broadway or theatre in general, it may look, like, “Well, there was a Black person in that ensemble” or “someone was playing the Black best friend” or “you just had ‘Tina’ on Broadway.” But, a lot of times when you go backstage, there’s no color in the I.A.T.S.E., in the wardrobe union, the hair-and-makeup union, the stage managers. People in casting—I can’t think of a single person of color. Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that I can’t get one to come to my head is a problem.

There are so few directors of color. When you run into issues with the way a script is being dealt with or with people who aren’t being seen for certain roles, a lot of the trouble would be solved if you had other people of color in the room saying, “Well, this is why you’re getting blowback right now,” or “Just open your mind to this,” or “Why are we not telling more of these people’s—our people’s—stories?” You have no one in the room thinking about that, because they can have the privilege to not have to think about that, especially when a large percentage of the audience is white as well. It’s just a white landscape.

The playwright Jeremy O. Harris tweeted that the most Tony Award-winning actor and the only living playwright with two Pulitzer Prizes—meaning you and Lynn Nottage—are both Black women, but you can’t say that of any of the major artistic directors in New York City.

Exactly. Artistic directors, producers. That should not be the case. Honestly, this feels like real change now. There are going to be too many people watching and too many people demanding that things look different. I’m seeing it in regional theatres in Utah that are putting out statements. And we have this generation, Gen Z, that is very aware of where they put their money, and they can get behind a cause or call out specific organizations or shows and bring a lot of unwanted attention in a very quick and powerful way. Theatre can’t miss this moment. Theatre will be left in the dust, I think, if we don’t make substantive changes.

In an alternate universe, you’d be playing Blanche DuBois right now in Williamstown. Has any of this made you feel differently about how you want to use your own presence onstage, your own choice of projects?

I’ve always chosen my projects with a great amount of integrity. I played a Black woman who was killed by police brutality in “Ragtime.” I’ve done “A Raisin in the Sun,” by one of the greatest Black female playwrights the theatre has known. And I played Billie Holiday—it’s terrible what happened to her. It was a terrible, slow car wreck. And there are things that I have fought for and things that I continue to fight for. I’m thinking of the role that I’m playing on “The Good Fight” right now. That was chosen very specifically, and they have writers of color on their staff. When things come down the pike that don’t feel right or are not explored in a way that feels authentic to Black people, Black women, we speak up. Delroy Lindo, myself, Nyambi Nyambi, Michael Boatman, Cush Jumbo, all of us.

In fact, the reason I chose to do this specific production of “Streetcar” is because Robert O’Hara is directing it. So this is a Black man directing this iconic piece of theatre and doing something quite revolutionary with it. Again, he’s clearing space. So I’m not going to change a thing about the way I have been choosing my projects, because I’ve always done it that way. And I was taught that by my parents.

In what way?

When I was young, I wanted to audition at my dinner theatre to play the “Negro servant” in “The Miracle Worker.” I was cast in the part, and my parents said, “Absolutely not.” I remember being so upset, and they said, “You’ll understand someday. You do not need to perpetuate that stereotype. There are other things you can do.” I was taught that lesson at, like, nine. And I can look back at my entire career and say that lesson has stayed with me the entire time.

Didn’t you play Evita when you were sixteen?

Yeah, at my dinner theatre. And that was in Fresno, California. Let me tell you something about Fresno, California: Devin Nunes represents it now. So there you go. And this was back in 1986, when I played that part. It was considered a scandal for me to do it. I was double cast, because it’s a hard role and I was still in high school, and people would call the box office and say, “Is the Black one or the white one on tonight?”

You were obsessed with Broadway as a child. Why did you end up studying classical voice at Juilliard?

I didn’t do my homework. I didn’t really study the curriculum for a Juilliard student in the voice department. I thought, my voice is my strongest suit—I’ll just audition as a singer. I had to audition with a Mozart aria, a Samuel Barber aria. I had to sing in a couple different languages. And so I should have known. Come on, Audra! It should have been your first clue! And they accepted me. I was shocked. I thought, You don’t say no to Juilliard—you go. I can be in New York, and I’ll be able to take acting lessons and dance lessons. I didn’t realize that all I would be allowed to study would be classical voice.

Was that the main reason why your experience there turned so nightmarish?

Yes. This is a glib way of describing it, but, if you love cake, but a cake is in another building, you don’t see it or touch it—so it doesn’t torture you as it would if it were in the room with you, and everybody else is eating, and you can’t have any. That’s what it felt like for me to be in New York, at Juilliard, living on Broadway, seeing Patti LuPone across the street in “Anything Goes.” It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, and here I am, in this little bubble, being told, “No, you can’t have it.”

It was as if I was in the film “Get Out.” I’ve gone into the Sunken Place. I see it all, and I cannot get to it. But I don’t blame Juilliard. That was their program.

To have a student who attempts suicide is a major deal. Looking back, do you feel, since we’ve been talking about institutional change, that there was some institutional support that you needed that you weren’t getting?

Once the suicide attempt happened, there was incredible support in terms of my mental health. They had a therapist in the school who you could speak with. They got me to a hospital, and then were a part of keeping me in that hospital for a month, until I could get to a place where I wasn’t going to hurt myself anymore. And then they let me take a leave of absence. They had all the support structures in place for the breakdown. And then, when I ended up coming back to school, getting this opportunity to audition for “The Secret Garden,” and then landing the part, the school said, “You go do that. We’ll hold your place here so you can come back.”

You went on to have a major career on Broadway, and won three Tonys by the time you were twenty-eight. How did you fortify yourself, to make sure that you could withstand the emotional pressure and not have this happen again?

Once I got out of the hospital, I still went to therapy on as regular a basis as I could. It was harder when I was on the road. We could all use therapy. My God, right now everyone could use therapy. I’ve always had this sort of overdrive—“I’m doing theatre. This is what I want to do—I want to perform.” As long as I’m pursuing that in some way, then I feel O.K.

But there are lots of battles that I have lost. There’s the pressure of, once you do well, then everyone says, “You’ve got three Tonys, now show me,” or “Well, you didn’t get a Tony that time—a-ha!” And then the pressure I put on myself of wanting to evolve, continuing to choose things that challenge me and things that I know might cause me to fall flat on my face. The hard part for me was when I was being told I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even do the one thing that I felt was in my bones. No one’s telling me that now, except, I guess, for the coronavirus.

The early part of your career, in the nineties, seems like this unstoppable rise, but I’m sure it wasn’t like that on the inside. You were completely unlike anyone else in terms of being a lyric soprano doing musicals, an African-American performer who didn’t have a big gospel voice or play “sassy,” all the things that you consciously avoided. Can you describe some of your early professional experiences, trying to break into this world?

I do want to say right off the bat that I’m not slamming people who are incredible gospel singers or great at playing sassy characters. That’s not me. We’re not a monolith. When I first started auditioning, I’d read Backstage and go in, and people would say things like, “Can you be a little more street?” or “Can you sass it up a little more?” I got that a lot in my cattle-call life.

And I did the cattle calls. People think I didn’t—I did. I ended up getting summer stock in Bucks County, in 1989. I remember even later, trying to audition for “Beauty and the Beast,” I couldn’t get cast as a spoon in the ensemble. I was devastated by that. Then, right after, I ended up auditioning for “Carousel.” I got that instead.

Funny, this is not your only story about having an issue with Disney. [In 1999, McDonald played Grace Farrell in an ABC television movie of “Annie,” and she said that the network asked the director, Rob Marshall, to shoot an alternate ending in which Daddy Warbucks does not propose marriage to her.]

Yes! They felt like they would lose part of their audience if Daddy Warbucks ended up proposing to Miss Grace, even though they had already cast me in the role. I mean, this was close to the end of our shooting schedule, so much of it was already in the can. All of a sudden, we have to reshoot because “we’re just not sure that this is going to fly in some of our Southern markets.” Aside from the fact that it was horrifying and embarrassing and infuriating for me, I look back on it and think, If I had the knowledge that I have now, would I have just quit? Because I have more of my voice than I did then. And I don’t know what the answer to that is, because Rob Marshall ended up being such an ally and blowing the reshoot so that they couldn’t use it. So I ended up staying in the room, and “Black Grace” ended up being someone absolutely worthy of Daddy Warbucks to propose to.

So much of your early career had to do with the idea of “color-blind casting,” or “nontraditional casting,” as you said in your Tony speech for “Carousel.” That was a very necessary step to open up the musical-theatre canon, but the conversation seems to have changed in the last ten years or so. I think of Daniel Fish’s production of “Oklahoma!,” which wasn’t just color-blind casting—it was a real reimagining of this canonical work by white authors. And of course there’s “Hamilton” as well. Has your own thinking evolved about so-called color-blind casting and the value of that versus other ways of opening up theatre?

Like, do I think that there is no longer any value in color-blind casting?

For instance, you mentioned “Streetcar.” The appeal wasn’t just playing Blanche DuBois but working with a Black director with a strong interpretation. It seems like a different conversation than the one people were having twenty-five years ago, when it was “can we have a Black Carrie Pipperidge?” There’s much more questioning of where these stories came from in the first place.

Yeah, and instead of just saying, “We’ve slipped them in, and, look at that, they’re doing just as well as a white person in that role,” it’s, like, “No, they’re in this role for a very specific reason,” to either blow the interpretation out in a completely different way or shine a light on who these characters are. The whole context of the play has to be in some ways reimagined, because you’re not saying, “Be blind to their color.” You’re saying, “Let their color now enhance how you see this entire story.”

It makes me think a lot about the production of “Porgy and Bess” that you were in eight or nine years ago, and how you and Diane Paulus and Suzan-Lori Parks were revising the original material. Which was controversial at the time, but now it seems, like, why wouldn’t women and people of color question this work by white men about Black people that was written eighty years ago?

Right. And obviously we know the controversy that that caused. We just wanted to make sure that they were, as Black people, as humanized as they could be. We were transforming as much of that narrative as we could. That’s not to say that the piece in and of itself isn’t brilliant. But you’re right—these are all white men writing about a Black experience. There were many, many, many conversations that went on in that creative room, with the cast as well.

Do you have an example of something being a really important choice for you?

Honestly, even the way that “Summertime” was sung. We didn’t want to say “mammy”; we wanted to say “mama.” Suzan-Lori Parks was just, like, “No, we’re going to make sure that we are as dignified and as human as possible telling this story, so they’re not just archetypes. Let’s make sure that we feel comfortable about what we’re doing up here.”

The biggest voice of criticism against this revision was, of course, Stephen Sondheim, who wrote a lengthy letter to the Times. Did you ever talk to him about it?

Nope. Steve has his opinions, and I have mine, and they’re different when it comes to “Porgy and Bess.” They’re incredibly different. And I think that my opinions are valid, and, in terms of my artistic experience and as a Black woman, I stand by everything I did with that production. So there’s no conversation to be had. Steve and I are still friends, but we’ve never discussed it.

Sticking on Sondheim for a moment, can I ask you about your Zoom rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” with Christine Baranski and Meryl Streep, for his ninetieth-birthday concert? How did the three of you put it together?

Christine and Meryl are friends, and Christine had the idea. We’d planned to take [Sondheim] out to dinner for his birthday, but here we were in quarantine, and this would be just a fun, silly way to give him a little birthday present and a giggle. And, as we started to hear this concert becoming bigger and bigger, we were, like, “What have we said yes to? Why is this turning into this big thing? Oh, no!” This was all just happening through phone calls and texts. We were sending each other little video snippets of what we were going to do, and that’s why I said, “Let’s all just Zoom together so we can see what it is.” And then from that bells went off.

I loved how you were all in bathrobes. Did you purposely want to make it look like you were having a breakdown in quarantine?

Yes! The whole point was: There’s nothing to do, so why even do your hair? At first, Christine was, like, “Let’s all do it in robes, so it’s like we’re at a spa” or something. And I was, like, that’ll work for Christine, because she’s so classy and beautiful, and Meryl is so elegant. No one’s going to believe that for me. So I said, “Can our hair be messy?” So what you end up seeing is lovely Christine in her robe, and then there’s Meryl being acerbic and fun but still looking beautiful. And then me, just broken down.

There’s a point where you look like you’re struggling to open your bottle of bourbon. Is that real?

No, of course, I made my acting choices. But I’ll tell you what, it was an actual bottle of bourbon. After a while, I was, like, I better slow down!

How do you generally feel about performing virtually?

I don’t love it, because I’m addicted to what I call the holy communion between the audience and the artist. But I understand the necessity of it, because we still need the arts. We need theatre. We need music. We need inspiration. We need catharsis. We need being in touch with our humanity.

It looks like live theatre is not going to be around for a while. You’re part of a theatre family. How worried are you about the time frame?

It’s very worrying. We’re luckier than other people in that we’ve been able to put some money away for a rainy day. But it’s hard. I worry about our friends. I worry about our industry. I know we’ll eventually be back. My gut tells me that, once people feel safe enough, people are going to rush back, because in some ways you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

It’s interesting timing, though, with the shutdown and the conversation we were talking about earlier, about race. People have seen this pause as a real opportunity to think bigger.

Right. And to be meticulous and deliberate in the way we go back, the way we rebuild. This is the window. With Black Theatre United, one of our ideas is trying to get people more civically involved, to get involved in their local elections, to raise awareness about the census and voter suppression. If there is a silver lining to all this awfulness, it’s that we have the time to truly focus.

At the same time, you’re in the upcoming movie “Respect,” playing Barbara Franklin, Aretha’s mother. What about Barbara’s story resonated with you?

I understood Aretha better by learning about Barbara Franklin and her tragically short life. [Franklin died of a heart attack at thirty-four.] And her difficult breakup with Aretha’s father, and how it affected her children. Aretha’s father was the one who ended up getting custody, and that was devastating not only for Barbara but for Aretha, too. Her mother was a great singer, and she had a big, beautiful soprano sound—which made me understand why Aretha kept saying for a while, “Well, maybe Audra McDonald could play me.” I kept thinking, Why? Because I have such a soprano sound. But I think I understand now what her affinity for my voice was: it was probably similar to her mother’s.

Did you meet Aretha over the years?

I met her once. She came to “Porgy and Bess,” and she came backstage and was so lovely. She took the time to be with the entire cast and take pictures. She was very patient. And of course I grew up with her voice in my house. One summer at Juilliard, all I would listen to was Aretha Franklin, Take 6—they were a great a-cappella group of six Black men—and “Porgy and Bess,” the Glyndebourne production that Sir Simon Rattle conducted, with Cynthia Haymon as Bess. Those were the three things I listened to on repeat that entire summer. So Aretha was the soundtrack for my entire life.

I want to ask you about Zoe Caldwell, who died in February. She was your castmate in “Master Class,” of course, and your older daughter’s namesake. Can you describe your relationship with Zoe and why it was so important to you?

Our relationship started when Terrence McNally took me out to lunch to say, “There’s a part I think you should play. The great Zoe Caldwell is playing Maria Callas, and I think you two would really be wonderful together.” She was a very intense woman. None of it was affectation—it was who she was. You felt like her eyes were boring into your soul. I remember walking out of that audition thinking, Oh, my God, she’s a lot. And then just realizing this hurricane-force power was Zoe Caldwell. I was, like, I am going to learn from this woman. She was like a mother figure. She would say it like it is. There were many times that she would yell at me.

About what?

One time a very famous woman came to see our show, who I was a huge fan of, and she wasn’t particularly warm to me backstage. Her face kind of fell when I walked in the room. And I became this sort of shy, self-deprecating wimp in this superstar’s presence, and Zoe was there watching this whole thing happen. And the next night, as I was going up the stairs to my dressing room, she said, [speaks in a deep, imperious voice] “Audra, come here.” I thought, Shit, I’m in trouble. And she says, “You’re right. Such-and-such doesn’t like you. I could see that. But don’t dare give anybody your power the way you gave it to her last night.” And then she told me this story about how she would do that in front of John Houseman, because John Houseman didn’t like her. She said, “And I learned my lesson. If people don’t like me, that is fine. I don’t give them my power.” I was, like, “I’m sorry!”

So that night, Lauren Bacall came to see the show, and I was coming downstairs and could see her greeting Zoe. And Zoe said, “Audra, come here. This is the great Betty Bacall.” And I was myself: I had my presence and my power. And then the next night, when I came upstairs, Zoe said, “That’s how you do it.” I’ve never forgotten that. Never.

That is great. It’s also a tantalizing blind item about this woman. We’ve eliminated Lauren Bacall, but other than that it could be anyone.

[Laughs] I’ve since had lovely interactions with that particular person. It’s all good!

You’ve just had a big birthday. What did you do to celebrate turning fifty?

My family gave me the most magical day. I was allowed to sleep in, which was glorious, because with a three-year-old I usually only get about four or five hours at the most. Finally, I came downstairs, and they had made this incredible breakfast for me. They had drawn out a map, and I had to go on this treasure hunt throughout our property. They had, like, eight or nine presents for me—I had to go over here behind a bench and down here by the butterfly bushes. The only thing I had asked for was a lobster dinner, so they had ordered a lobster dinner for me. And my husband had contacted all my friends and family from as far back as second and third grade, and they had all sent in memories, and he had put them all in this incredible leather-bound book.

So I’m weeping, reading page after page, and then all of the sudden one of my friends called—it was Lonny Price. I was talking to him on FaceTime, and then my daughter, from upstairs, goes, “Mom! Mom! I need you for something!” I’m, like, “O.K., I’m sorry! I have to go!” I run upstairs to my daughter. She turns her computer around. Lonny, along with all of my other friends, were on a Zoom call waiting for me, and then they sang “Happy Birthday” and my husband brought in a cake. It was just an overwhelming, beautiful day. I don’t think I got out of my pajamas the whole time. That was exactly the way I wanted to turn fifty. And I feel O.K. The leadup is scary. But now it’s just, like, Oh, yeah, I’m fifty. I’ll just do what I want.