Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose, who hosted the Tony Awards a few weeks ago, was in Atlanta recently for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the OMEGA boutique and a dinner that evening. Between gigs, DeBose — an OMEGA brand ambassador — took time to talk to reporters.
The actress’s first major professional musical was in 2011 with the Alliance Theatre’s “Bring It On,” featuring music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyrics by Amanda Green and Miranda, and book by Jeff Whitty. Buoyed by strong reviews, the show made it to Broadway in 2012. DeBose calls the Atlanta gig the real start of her career. She’s also been in the blockbuster “Hamilton,” the film version of the queer-themed “The Prom,” and won her Oscar for Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story.”
It’s been important for her to be out.
“When I won an Oscar, I didn’t expect that,” said DeBose. “To be the first Afro-Latino and the first openly queer women [of color] to win an Oscar was huge. It was huge for my communities. I think that is largely because of representation. If you can see it, you can be it. Now I’m in this new chapter of my life where I am symbolizing possibility for some people, and I take that very seriously. With the myriad of LGBTQ legislation that we are seeing, it is important to use my platform to talk about what it is to vote and the importance of how it affects other people and what true allyship looks like.”
The new documentary, “Every Body,” is an extraordinary look at the lives of intersex people. The subjects are actor/ screenwriter River Gallo, political consultant Alicia Roth Weigel and Ph.D. student Sean Saifa Wall. Wall lived in Atlanta from 2012 to 2020.
According to director Julie Cohen, her friends at NBC News asked her to look through their archives for material that might make a potent film. She immediately gravitated toward the stranger-than-fiction story of Dr. John Money and his unorthodox treatment of patient…
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