“Child,” Ariana DeBose confided, “you’re all the time on.”
DeBose, an Oscar winner and a longtime Broadway phenom, was talking of herself, within the second particular person, final Saturday night. Wearing a beige ribbed tank, athletic shorts and chunky heeled boots, she was nonetheless glistening from a rehearsal for Sunday’s Tony Awards broadcast. “On” is an understatement: This might be her third time internet hosting the ceremony, and her first time producing and choreographing.
“Why I did that, I’ll by no means know,” she mentioned. “Expensive lord, the Tonys is only one big studying expertise. You need to be humble.”
Humble. And really busy. DeBose is 33 however nonetheless very a lot a theater child. Her speech was quick, excitable, and when not vaping from a scorching pink pen, she had a bent to achieve out to pat my arm or leg, an intimate type of emphasis. Quickly, she would take herself out for a hurried plate of pasta earlier than racing to a night present. For the previous two weeks, DeBose has been on a mission, nonetheless implausible, to see the entire nominated performs and musicals.
Till the tip of Might, DeBose had been in Winnipeg, Manitoba, taking pictures an motion movie, “With Love.” She arrived in New York Metropolis the Saturday earlier than Memorial Day and noticed her first present that Sunday. On the day we spoke, every week earlier than the printed, she had simply three exhibits remaining. (One, “Water for Elephants,” she would see that night time.) And this was along with arduous rehearsal days.
“These are reverse processes,” she mentioned of internet hosting and spectating. “They’re very totally different disciplines, however you’ll be able to’t host when you don’t know who’s concerned. So to me, it’s a requirement.”
That schedule appeared grueling. DeBose selected a unique phrase: inspiring. “I’m not exhausted by Broadway,” she mentioned, flashing her 100-watt smile. “I’m like, ‘Y’all are doing it. Y’all are doing the strikes.’”
This Broadway season struck her as unusually different. Nonetheless she acknowledged overarching themes. Many exhibits have been concerning the indomitability of the human spirit. “Which is so stunning,” she mentioned. “That’s the operate of artwork, a reminder that there’s hope on the planet.” Others requested the viewers to think about troublesome subjects — prejudice, aggression, acceptance. As a dancer, she additionally had enthusiastic phrases for among the choreography, particularly the combat scene in “The Outsiders.” She described Justin Peck’s “Illinoise” as “a brand new technology’s ‘Movin’ Out,’ or the unique Bob Fosse’s ‘Dancin’.”
Often she has felt jealous, although largely in a joyful method, dreaming of what it may need been wish to function on this season’s “Cabaret” revival or to have performed Gussie in “Merrily We Roll Alongside.” And she or he has admired this season’s mixture of Hollywood names and newly minted expertise. “For each ‘Mom Play,’ there’s a ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’” she mentioned, referring to star turns from the veteran performer Jessica Lange (“Mom Play”) and the Broadway newcomer Maleah Joi Moon (“Hell’s Kitchen”).
When the Tonys approached her about internet hosting its 2022 present, she was contemporary off an Oscar win and wasn’t a family identify. (She is extra recognizable now, although in rest room strains at exhibits, she mostly hears: “Has anybody ever advised you that you just look identical to Ariana DeBose?”) She figures that the producers have been drawn to her story, an ensemble member made good. “Past that, I don’t know what they have been smoking,” she mentioned.
On the opposite facet of the pandemic, her exuberance was most probably a draw, as was her sunniness. “I’ve a private rule of constructive vibes solely,” she mentioned. For the previous two broadcasts, she has delivered celebration with out snark, even within the midst of final 12 months’s writers’ strike, when she needed to work with no script.
However underlying this exuberance is what she described as “crippling anxiousness,” as a result of she desires to be the most effective host potential and since she feels that as a queer girl of shade, she doesn’t have a lot margin for error.
“If I get it incorrect, then it may reduce any person else’s probabilities,” she mentioned. “If I am going on the market and blow it, I don’t know after they’re going to rent a lady of shade or a queer particular person, simply because I obtained it incorrect as soon as.”
DeBose has introduced that this might be her final 12 months as Tonys host, at the very least for some time, largely as a result of she hopes to return to Broadway. When she left, she was an ingénue, now she’s in her main period. And she or he desires to guide a present that’s “humane and doable, as a result of I’ve labored in productions that aren’t,” she mentioned. “After I come again, I simply need to try to get it proper.”
Within the meantime, she had these final exhibits to see and one big awards ceremony to arrange for. There could be dazzling outfits, a showstopping opener and a calming bottle of rosé as soon as she had pulled all of it off. Which she would.
“I’m an entertainer,” she mentioned. “That is about pleasure and pleasure and celebration. These have been my mandates. And that’s what we’re doing.”
