Stephanie Mills takes the yellow brick road back to Broadway — 50 years after ‘The Wiz’: ‘It’s been a wonderful journey’

nypost.com:

Stephanie Mills didn’t exactly ease herself on down the road to Oz — and Broadway immortality — five decades ago in “The Wiz.”“My mother had to make me go to the audition because I didn’t want to go,” Mills, 67, told The Post about that fateful first tryout for the starring role of Dorothy in 1974. “I had gone up for so many things and then I didn’t get them, so I was kind of disappointed, so I didn’t want to go.

But she made me go, and I’m glad she did. It’s been a wonderful journey.”Indeed, it was a brand new day for Mills — and, ultimately, the Great White Way — when she first stepped into Dorothy’s ruby slippers 50 years ago in the Tony-winning musical that put an African-American spin on “The Wizard of Oz.”After “The Wiz” — originally subtitled “The Super Soul Musical ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ ” — opened at the Morris A .

Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore on Oct. 21, 1974, Mills, with Toto in tow, followed that yellow brick road to Broadway’s Majestic Theatre in January 1975.And for the first time since “The Wiz,” Mills is now back in a Broadway musical as Hermes in “Hadestown,” Anaïs Mitchell’s Tony-winning folk opera that has transformed the Walter Kerr Theatre into a Greek underworld since 2019.“I hadn’t seen it before I got the offer,” said Mills, who is now based in Charlotte, North Carolina. “They flew me to New York to see it, and I loved it.”And then there was a magical “Wiz” connection: “I realized that André De Shields, who was my Wiz 50 years ago, won a Tony as Hermes.

We saw each other at the opening of ‘The Wiz’ [Broadway revival in April], and I was telling him that the people were really interested in me doing ‘Hadestown.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to do it.’“And once I actually said I would do it,.