PHOTOGRAPHY BY HEATHER STEN
Origins: Hampton Roads, Virginia, where Adrienne Warren’s love of the stage came early. “I was 6 years old, watching a community theater performance of Aladdin with my mom,” the actress, now 32, remembers, “and I turned around and said, ‘I want to do that!’”
Breakout Role: Warren made her Broadway debut in 2012’s Bring It On: The Musical, but she truly broke through—and earned her first Tony nomination—playing two different ingenues in the 2016 critical hit Shuffle Along, a meta-musical that highlighted the struggles of mounting an all-black play in 1920s New York. While diversity in theater remains a hot-button issue, Warren thinks we need to reframe the narrative. “It’s so interesting that we talk about ‘diversity,’ when the truth is diversity is just ‘realism,’” she says. “We need creative spaces that actually represent the world we live in.”
Star Turn: This month, Warren returns to Broadway with Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, reprising her portrayal of the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll from the musical’s run on London’s West End—a performance for which she was handpicked by Turner herself and earned an Olivier Award nomination. “When I put the wig on, it was like putting on a crown,” says Warren, who first listened to the iconic diva as a child. “I remember feeling electrified by not just her voice but the instrumentation of her music. It sent a lightning bolt up through my spine and just made me dance and feel strong and empowered—if you can feel strong and empowered at 7.”
Keepin’ It Real: “[Turner] did not want to do a Disney version of this,” Warren says of the musical, which features a book by acclaimed playwright Katori Hall. “It had to tell the truth. She wanted the audience to really understand the pain and the evolution.”
