Ariana DeBose Talks ‘Kraven The Hunter’, ‘Two And Only’ & Refusing To “Fit In A Box” — Deadline Disruptors
deadline.com“There is indeed a place for us,” Ariana DeBose said on the Oscar stage back in March. As the first Afro Latina and the first openly queer woman of color to win, she addressed her acceptance speech—for her role of Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story—to those who have ever questioned their identity and find themselves in “the gray spaces”.
In the audience that night the 90-year-old Rita Moreno was in tears. Having played Anita 60 years earlier, she had been the first Latina ever to win an acting Oscar.And now DeBose carries that torch forward.
A woman who set aside her fears and told Spielberg “no” to reading at the first West Side Story audition because she hadn’t had adequate time to prepare, she was Tony-nominated for her role in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, lauded for her work on the original cast of Hamilton, and spent a decade on stage before making her name on screen.
In Ryan Murphy’s The Prom, she played a closeted cheerleader, drawing on her own experience of dancing with a girl at her prom back home in North Carolina.
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