Live from New York: Adrienne Warren

After Adrienne Warren graduated from the musical theater department at the esteemed Governor's School for the Arts in Virginia and moved to New York, she wasn’t quite sure which direction she wanted her career to take. "Honestly, I just wanted to be able to pay my bills," she says, laughing. "I was in a rock and roll band when I first moved to New York, and then theater, and then TV and film came a little bit later. It's never been something that has been an easy thing for me—this has been a journey, and I'm grateful for the hard times."

Now thirty-four years old, Warren is best known for her career on the stage, having made her Broadway début in 2012 in the musical Bring It On, loosely based on the popular cheerleading film, before earning her first Tony Award nomination in 2016 for her performance in Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, a reconsideration of the first all-Black Broadway hit from almost a century earlier. Currently, Warren stars as the titular pop icon in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, a role she's played since the show opened on the West End in 2018, moved to Broadway the following year, then closed in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. "I always joke and say it's a miracle anybody even knows my name because honestly, every show that I've been in on Broadway closed within a matter of months, and then Tina closed because of the pandemic," she laughs, "so I've been blessed to have the career that I have. To have the opportunities that I've had, I don't take that lightly. It's a blessing to be where I am in my life right now, in my career. I can't believe it sometimes; I constantly pinch myself."

After Broadway’s long hiatus, performances of Tina will resume on October 8. The show has earned a dozen Tony nominations, spanning the range from Best Book of a Musical to Best Choreography and including one for Warren in the Best Actress category for what the New York Times called a "star-making performance." "Anytime you're recognized by your peers is an incredible moment," the actress says, "but I'm actually the most excited about the fact that my show has twelve nominations because in a role like this, oftentimes you are the one that's highlighted all the time. The fact that everybody got recognition is just icing on the cake for me, truly." Warren will be returning for one last run of performances before her fellow cast member Nkeki Obi-Melekwe takes over as Tina on November 2. "I'm excited to have the opportunity to close this chapter. It's been an incredible one," Warren says. "I'm just grateful for the opportunity to close with a cast that I love in a role that I love."

This weekend, Warren won't only be recognized for her celebrated performance as Tina: Her work as co-founder of the nonprofit Broadway Advocacy Coalition has earned her a Special Tony Award for the organization's efforts in bringing equity to the theater. The move to honor the group has been a while coming—first founded in 2016 in response to the silence from the Broadway industry regarding the epidemic of police brutality against the Black community, the organization has since evolved to incorporate various initiatives from aiding casts and institutions on improving diversity through workshops to developing a program at Columbia Law School called Theater of Change, which connects law and policy students with artists and advocates to strengthen their connections to the arts. "This nonprofit really works in helping individuals find the capacity to take the marriage between art and advocacy and empower people to learn how to change policy through art, through communication, through education, and highlight those voices and stories of those directly affected by systemic oppression and systemic racism," says Warren, "and to try to change policy by highlighting those stories and empowering those to tell those stories through art."

The Broadway Advocacy Coalition gained renewed attention following the death of George Floyd in May 2020. As an entire country reckoned with racial relations, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition organized a three-day digital forum, Black Lives Matter Again, in which BIPOC performers and creators were encouraged to share their stories, urgently calling on Broadway to improve. While Warren values the recognition of the Special Tony, she says the award doesn’t mark the pinnacle of the nonprofit’s efforts. "I think I'll speak for the entire organization when I say if anything it just affirms our presence within the industry and we are for sure not going to shut up," she says. "We are just beginning, and I think we will continue to hold this industry accountable and continue to hold ourselves accountable for our space within it."

In her next role, Warren will star as the celebrated activist Mamie Till-Mobley in Women of the Movement, premiering early next year on ABC. Produced by companies including Roc Nation and Kapital Entertainment, the latter of which recently signed Warren to a one-year exclusive development deal, the six-part miniseries tells the story of Mamie, the mother of Emmett Till, who devoted her life to seeking justice for the murder of her son and became a leader of the civil rights movement through her work touring the country on speaking engagements where she recounted the inequity and oppression she experienced. "I was really drawn to this role because I did not know enough about her," admits Warren, "and when I have the opportunity to tell a story where I actually personally don't know enough about the individual, it's an opportunity and a responsibility that I don't take lightly. The truth is, I didn't know a lot about Emmett as a person, as a little boy. Who was he? I knew he was a victim, but I didn't know who he was, and I thought if I could be a part of that and help present a lens of humanity to their names and their legacy, then I would be more than blessed to have that opportunity."

To prepare for the role, Warren dove into books about the Tills, but, more importantly, spent time researching what Mamie might have experienced in losing her child. "I took the time to watch a lot of interviews of mothers who had lost their sons to either police brutality or acts of hatred and ignorance," recalls Warren, "and that did a lot for me because one thing that I think they all had in common was the fact that they didn't choose to be advocates or activists. They were forced into that scene or into that power, that spotlight, because of pain, because of an absence of a soul of a child, because of an absence of a part of them."

In embodying such an emotionally exhaustive role, Warren says she felt her perspective change dramatically as she reevaluated how America views historical heroes and the pedestals they are placed upon. "We don't often look at them as human beings," she says. "We often think of their triumphs, but we don't see the moments of pause. We don't see the moments of confusion or pain or either ignorance or joy or love, even." In considering how she views her own idols, Warren says she found herself contemplating what it was that led them to step into the spotlight in this way, and how figures such as Mamie become bound to certain paths. "Most of the time is because it is fueled by pain and trauma, and that changes everything about an individual," she says. "It changed everything about how I view those who have that power and those who make a commitment to their lives to be of service for the greater good. I just have such a greater respect and understanding, and I just honor them in a way that I maybe did before, but not to the extent that I do now."

As for the direction of her next career move, the details of where that will happen seem not to be the highest priority—what matters to Warren is only celebrating creativity at the intersection of art and advocacy, and making choices to give a platform to figures such as Mamie through her own performances and productions. "My heart is telling stories that I believe in, whether that's the producing space or in front of the lens or behind the lens," she says. "Right now, I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn more about the entertainment industry and to find the capacity within myself and use the different perspectives that I have both as an artist and as an advocate. I'm just grateful to have the opportunity to explore stories and bring them to the forefront, especially when they're stories of those most directly affected by oppressive systems or stories that we rarely hear. I just want to empower as many people as I possibly can while I can."

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical resumes performances on October 8 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York. Women of the Movement premieres in early 2022 on ABC. See the full portfolio celebrating the return of live performance to New York this season here. Read this story and many more in print by preordering our Fall 2021 issue here.