André De Shields
speaker
298 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 21 Jul
André De Shields’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I don't rush anywhere.
I walk slowly.
My reputation is that Andre De Shields doesn't walk, he floats.
Now, but this is because each of us, if we want to do something as...
commonplace as be happy, and if you want to do something as exceptional as being called a legend, then one really must be
commit to being his best self.
Well, you've explained it in a nutshell.
In the early 70s, Broadway was an inhospitable terrain for black actors and black audiences.
And with the advent of The Wiz, that all changed.
Part of the change had to do with the decision by the producer, Ken Harper,
to take some of the money and invest it in live action TV commercials so that we could lean into the living room and speak to our brethren who are sitting on the couch and say to them, don't sit there and become a couch potato.
There's something that represents you playing on Broadway.
You no longer have any reason to avoid it.
You have a reason to come and become part of it.
So The Wiz opened that door for the growth of a black audience on Broadway and an invitation to black artists to perform on Broadway.
And we took that lesson from the brilliant film that starred Judy Garland, The Wizard of Oz.
But I certainly identified with her huge vulnerability, which made her a tremendous lesson in how to get an audience of people to pay attention.
Now, that storyline...
was the exclusive world of white actors and white audiences.
But the magic that Ken Harper brought to the production was to take that line of truth out of Dorothy's mouth, which is, there's no place like home.
Showing 81–100 of 298 · page 5 of 15
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