You gotta love this thing. Whatever you choose to pursue - medicine, law, writing, you have to love it. You study it, you eat it, you drink it, you try it, you do it, you love it in every way.
From Leslie Odom, Jr.
I grew up in Philadelphia in a time where we took it for granted that we were supposed to be young and gifted and black. It was a culture of excellence - and all my friends were more talented than I was.
It's still a political statement to stand on stage as a person of color and be excellent. We still need those images to combat the narrative we're often fed - as someone innately inferior or inexorably linked with lack.
My dad was an early hip-hop fan.
We didn't go to Broadway musicals when I was growing up; it was too expensive.
I remember Ella Fitzgerald sort of coming into my life like a bolt of lightning - like, what is that? It was one of the purest examples of God in art that I'd ever seen.
I've dedicated more than 15 years to this theater and television thing; I want to spend the next 10, 15 years or so devoted to music.
I don't want to leave anything offstage.
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