Audra McDonald
speaker
41 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Audra McDonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
She was there at the same time as well and other really wonderful people. But I was stuck. I was watching them do this and I wasn't. And here I was in New York at Juilliard practicing. My address was literally Broadway. And I had never felt so far away from my goal, which was Broadway. So I left school. I like to joke that I did the four-year program in five years.
And I left Juilliard for a little while because I just couldn't handle it anymore. And one of the things I ended up doing while I was taking some time off was I auditioned for things and I got into the touring company of the Secret Garden. And so I went on the road with that. And then I came back and did the last two months of Secret Garden on Broadway and finished school at the same time.
And then from that, I went back out on the road and I got an agent and my agent said, we've got this audition for you for Carousel.
I marry Mr. Snow Then it's off to home we'll go And both of us will look a little dreamy Roger McDonald singing a bit from Carousel, and she's talking with The New Yorker's Michael Shulman.
It breezes below
I wasn't even thinking leading lady. I was, you know, a little black girl from Fresno, nine years old, in this dinner theater. Got to be Uncle Jocko's kitty. I was, you know, a kid in the ensemble of Hello, Dolly! I, you know, I ended up, they cast me when I was 16 to play Eva Peron and Evita at the local dinner theater.
Which was a big scandal because they double cast the role and the other woman was a 23 or 24 year old white woman. And so this is Fresno land of like Devin Nunes.
Right. So, yeah. So people would call the box office and say, is the black or the white one on tonight? I'm not even kidding. But, you know, in my estimation, I just wanted to be on Broadway. I just wanted to do theater, and I wanted to be on Broadway, and I didn't care what I did. As long as I got to be on Broadway, that was the goal, you know?
It was guided primarily as a means of sort of like to be therapy for me because I was a hyperactive child who was having a lot of problems in school, not socializing well, considered very overdramatic. And... But not functioning well, you know? And they were told, let's try Ritalin. This was 1976, 77. Let's try Ritalin.
And my parents thought, no, we don't want to, I'm not judging anybody who does do it. And my parents weren't either. They just said, we don't think that's right for our girl. But they knew that I liked to sing. And they had gone to see a show at this dinner theater and said, why don't you go and audition for that? And that lit me up.
Yeah. Um, so the dinner theater had their main stage where they would have the musicals and then they had a smaller stage where they would do plays called the second space. And, um, They were doing The Miracle Worker, and I auditioned and got cast as sort of the servant black girl, slave girl. I don't think she's a slave, but she's a servant girl in The Miracle Worker.
And I guess I just went and auditioned without telling my parents whatever. And when I got cast, they said, you will absolutely not be playing that role. Absolutely not. And I was upset. And they said, you'll understand when you're older, but we don't want you doing that. And so they put their foot down. And I understand it. I understand why they did that. You know, my parents were educators.
My dad ended up being associate superintendent of schools in Fresno, California before he retired. And my mom worked at California State University. for years, and, like, I remember trying to watch Little Rascals, and they were like, no, no, no, no, no, you're not watching that.
You know, they, you know, pride in who I was and pride in being a black person and not demeaning myself in a society that, you know, sought to demean and separate and other black people was something they were very... very adamant about making sure that I had pride in myself in that way. And so, no, I remember trying to thinking about trying to audition for showboat as well.
And they were like, you ain't doing that. You can do it. Not that. I mean, again, wonderful musical, but my parents were like, there's other, you don't need to do that.
I think a couple reasons, but the main one is because I am a mother of two girls. I also have two step-sons. And I am that mom that is sometimes off, not necessarily leading what I call the glamorous life. For me, my life gets glamorous when I get to be home with my family. Sometimes I feel very guilty sometimes. about being gone and being away.
So the song speaks to those fears for me and what my children might actually think or feel in terms of wanting and needing me and missing me and not having me there. So I sing that song as therapy for my fears, I guess.
It's a theater household.
Yes, and I have to say, my youngest one is most, you know, because our other kids are a product of, my husband is an actor, Will Swenson, and, you know, our kids from our other marriage is a product of one performer and then someone who's not a performer, but our little one, poor thing. Yeah. That's just a child of performers' DNA coming in on both sides.
And our little one, who just turned eight a couple days ago. We were at a get-together, and a friend of mine was also at this get-together, and he's also in Gypsy. And we were getting ready to start rehearsals, and he went up to Sally, and he's like, you know I'm going to be working with your mom in Gypsy. And he said, is anything, what do you want to tell me? And she said, well...
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