Design by Cassie Skoras
In the winter of 2009, I made a list. I grabbed a piece of scrap paper from my parents’ kitchen desk and wrote down every single Meryl Streep movie that existed on the internet. Every weekend, I shut myself in my bedroom to reach beyond what I viewed as a limiting Midwestern upbringing.
I started with
The Bridges of Madison County, the movie that first drew me to Meryl years earlier. She plays Francesca, an Italian woman who moves to America after World War II to marry an Iowan farmer. The character reminded me of my grandmother Marjorie she left her lush, coastal home in British Columbia to settle with my grandfather in Missouri, where she raised three kids, cooked all the meals, baked all the treats, worked as a nurse, and sewed costumes for the local theater. After she turned 70 and her dementia worsened, she would reach for the phone book to call her mother, who’d been dead for decades. She’d ask me, then a pre-teen, if she could go down to the
Ariana DeBose spoke to
Glamour UK about coming out as queer and discrimination she has faced as an Afro-Latina. The actress, 29, who stars in Netflix s adaptation of
The Prom with Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, spent years on the Broadway stage, appearing in
Hamilton and earning a Tony nomination for
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.
Even though she loved performing, she wasn t always confident about her appearance. I never felt pretty, she said. I equated beauty for a long time with what I saw on screen or on a television set. I never thought in a million years that I would end up in movies. I never thought I would be pretty enough to do it consistently.
Greg Williams
Ariana DeBose will be the first to tell you she’s been waiting a long time for this. The Tony nominee worked steadily on Broadway in shows like
Hamilton and
Summer: The Donna Summer Musical for almost a decade. But this? A feature film directed by Ryan Murphy? Opposite Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Kerry Washington? This is way different. Because with
The Prom, DeBose is becoming the movie star she wished she could watch growing up.
The musical was an anomaly when it premiered on Broadway in 2018. It s not based on an existing story, like the life of a pop diva or a movie instead, its premise revolves around Indiana teen Emma, who wants to take her girlfriend to prom. When this scandal leads to the event being canceled, four New York stage actors take up the cause in the name of positive PR.
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It doesn’t bear repeating how awful 2020 has been for the world, including for Broadway and high schoolers. For Broadway, all shows in New York City have been cancelled through May 30, 2021. A recent Broadway musical,
The Prom, ended its run in 2019, and a national tour that was planned for 2021 is postponed. For high schoolers, actual proms were cancelled, and it might be awhile until teenagers can safely go to a school dance again.
Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the 2018 musical seems like it would be the next best thing to experience
The Prom these days. Considering how much I miss being able to go to Broadway shows, it says something that this film didn’t make me miss it more. With all of its glitz, glam and star power,
The Prom Stars Ariana DeBose and Jo Ellen Pellman Launch Unruly Hearts Initiative playbill.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from playbill.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.