Exclusive: Tony Award Winner Leslie Odom, Jr. on Returning to Broadway with Purlie Victorious
Opening on Wednesday, September 27 at The Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th St.) is the Broadway revival of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch by the legendary Ossie Davis starring Leslie Odom, Jr..
Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch is the rousing, laugh-filled comedy by Ossie Davis that tells the story of a Black preacher’s machinations to reclaim his inheritance and win back his church.
With direction by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, Leslie Odom, Jr. will star in the production as “Purlie Victorious Judson”, alongside Vanessa Bell Calloway as “Idella Landy”, Billy Eugene Jones as “Gitlow Judson”, Noah Pyzik as “Deputy”, Noah Robbins as “Charlie Cotchipee”, Jay O. Sanders as “Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee”, Heather Alicia Simms as “Missy Judson”, Bill Timoney as “Sheriff” and Tony Award nominee Kara Young as “Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins”.
The original play premiered on Broadway in 1961 at the Cort Theatre (now the James Earl Jones Theatre), directed by Howard Da Silva, and starred Ossie Davis as “Purlie Victorious Judson” and his wife and frequent collaborator, Ruby Dee as “Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins.” Original cast members also included: Alan Alda, Godfrey Cambridge, Sorrell Booke and Beah Richards. For its 100th performance, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited the company and celebrated the milestone with them.
Photo by Rowena Husbands
Odom, Jr. is a multifaceted Tony and Grammy Award-winning, three-time Emmy and two-time Academy Award-nominated vocalist, songwriter, author, and actor. He was seen in Rian Johnson’s critically acclaimed Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, streaming worldwide on Netflix. Odom will next be seen on the highly anticipated sequel to the original iconic film The Exorcist. The film is scheduled to be released in October 2023. In 2020, Odom starred as legendary singer Sam Cooke in the award-winning Amazon film adaptation of One Night in Miami…, directed by Regina King. His portrayal of the soul icon and musical performance of original song “Speak Now” was met with widespread praise and critical acclaim, earning him multiple awards and nominations. He also starred in The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to David Chase’s award-winning HBO series The Sopranos.
Well known for his breakout role as ‘Aaron Burr’ in the smash hit Broadway musical Hamilton, Odom hosted “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!” on CBS in September 2021 (2022 Emmy nomination). Additional film and television credits include Apple TV+’s Central Park (2020 Emmy nomination), Hamilton on Disney+ (2021 Emmy nomination), Abbott Elementary, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Love in the Time of Corona, Harriet, and many more. He is a BMG recording artist and has released four full-length albums. Co-written with Nicolette Robinson, Odom’s first children’s book, I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know, will be published by Feiwel & Friends on March 28, 2023.
Blackfilmandtv.com’s Wilson Morales spoke with Odom, Jr. on his return to Broadway and his desire to play this role.
It’s your first time back on Broadway since Hamilton. Why this particular play?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Yeah. I've been chasing this play for six years. Lin-Manuel Miranda gave me the role of a lifetime with Aaron Burr. And so after that, it makes things challenging, and it makes things difficult because I want to work on something as rich as human, and that has the breadth of life that Aaron Burr had. There’s not a ton of roles like that in the cannon for black actor. And so this was the one that came to mind. I don't question when inspiration strikes. I had mentioned in a previous interview, Purlie Victorious and my agent and I started chasing it six years ago. It’s taken us all this time to make it happen.
Now, when you say you and your agent, did you have to talk to the family to get their permission to do this?
Photo by Rowena Husbans
Leslie Odom Jr.: Many times? Yes. For the first three years, there was a producer in New York that had the rights, not Jeffrey Richards, who's the lead the producer now. There was a producer who had the rights that that was not interested in a conversation. And so we just would call every year and inquire again, like, “hey, might you be interested in the conversation” and he wasn't in all those years. And so, three years ago, his option ended, and we were able to begin conversations in earnest then. So I've been talking to the family pretty regularly for about three years.
Today's generation is not going to be familiar with Ozzie Davis and what he did with this play, and so what are we getting with this particular performance?
Leslie Odom, Jr. and Wilson Morales - Photo by Rowena Husbands
Leslie Odom Jr.: I just was reading really fantastic how the word is passed, Clint Smith, and theater is one of the ways the word is passed. It's an original document, and Mr. Davis sat down to write a story about his childhood growing up in the segregated rural South. And he realized it was too painful to ask an audience to sit through. So we get Purlie Victorious, A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, emphasis on Romp. But that pathos is still in there. We earn that that moment, and we've got a minute or two, where he lets us feel and experience that pain. And after an evening full of laughs, but I just say that we're at a time right now that they're banning books. Toni Morrison books for God's sake, ripping out The Bluest Eye if you can imagine something like that. So before someone gets the idea of him to ban Purlie Victorious, come down to the Music Box Theater and see this honest and earnest black expression uncensored.
You're working with Kenny Leon for the first time? What's that experience and working with this ensemble?
Leslie Odom Jr.: I love the room Kenny steps in. It is. I'm just getting started so that I don't I don't have the full words. I haven't had a whole lot of time to ruminate on the experience we've just jumped in. But I've never worked with a director like Kenny. Kenny has a wisdom and honesty and generosity that is hard to find. He's the only director working in the theater today that should be directing his play. And I just feel so grateful to have him as our general. And this cast, as Kenny says, is the best cast in the world. So yeah, we I just think we have an extraordinary company of actors to bring this American literature. Mr. Davis talked about how disappointed he was in the first run. I don't think the world was really ready to speak about a black writer in those terms. He might be a great author, and man of words as he was, but that's what this is and and in the theater we see literature come to life.
As a co producer, we all know how historic was that Martin Luther King? Did you think of that? If you should get 100 performances? What you can do?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Oh, yes. The most meaningful day of the whole Hamilton experience was when we got that invitation to come to the White House. As a theatre actor, it doesn't get any better than the leader of the free world, this Black president, his wife, saw fit that they should clear their schedules for 45 minutes and give us their full attention was deeply meaningful. And I imagine that it must have felt that way for that original company of Purlie Victorious that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would clear his calendar for the evening and come to the theater. So I hope that those moments highlight just how useful this this can be an impactful the theater can be and I hope that people will clear their schedules and get on down to The Music Box and see Purlie Victorious.