Ariana DeBose got the biggest break of her career while she was having a manicure. DeBose, one of America's most accomplished musical performers who has blossomed into a versatile acting star, was getting her nails done when Steven Spielberg rang to ask if she wanted to be in his film of West Side Story, as Anita: the role that made Rita Moreno famous six decades ago.
Moreno appeared in the first screen version, based on the Broadway show about love and war (of the gang variety), created by composer Leonard Bernstein, songwriter Stephen Sondheim (at the start of his glorious career), writer Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins.
The language of dance in West Side Story is as articulate as Laurents' libretto and the lyrics created by Sondheim, who died aged 91 a week ago. It's the engine that drives the story of the Sharks (a Puerto Rican gang) and the Jets (white teens), battling over three square blocks of condemned turf that would later become the cultural citadel, the Lincoln Center.
Ariana DeBose with David Alvarez in West Side Story. The language of dance in West Side Story is as articulate as Laurents' libretto and the lyrics created by Sondheim, who died aged 91 a week ago
DeBose is electrifying in the film, which opens in cinemas next Friday. 'Thank God I came into this world dancing,' she joked, 'because if not, I don't know how I would have made it through West Side Story.'
How so, when even Moreno, who won an Oscar for her performance, concedes that her successor is a better dancer? 'We rehearsed for a month and a half on all the big dance numbers,' DeBose explained. 'When we shot them, we were in the street; doing multiple takes — on cement!'
Somewhere, somehow, during the pre-production process 'I twisted my ankle very badly'. 'Then, once we started filming, I was still healing. I was not 100 per cent for this film — but I certainly faked it till I made it.'
I'm flabbergasted, frankly; because from the moment DeBose and David Alvarez (one of the original Broadway Billy Elliots back in 2008), who plays her boyfriend Bernardo — leader of the Sharks — are corralled into a gymnasium where they're supposed to make nice with the Jets at a social dance, the floor is hers.
Ariana DeBose (pictured) got the biggest break of her career, a casting in West Side Story, while she was having a manicure
DeBose, one of America's most accomplished musical performers who has blossomed into a versatile acting star, was getting her nails done when Steven Spielberg rang to ask if she wanted to be in his film of West Side Story, as Anita: the role that made Rita Moreno famous six decades ago
DeBose is electrifying in the film, which opens in cinemas next Friday. 'Thank God I came into this world dancing,' she joked, 'because if not, I don't know how I would have made it through West Side Story'
The pair dance the mambo and the cha-cha to the rhythm of Bernstein's transcendent score, DeBose kicking up her legs, black skirt flying to reveal a fiery red petticoat that swirls as she whirls.
The film, which was due to open last year, stars Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler as the Romeo and Juliet couple, Tony and Maria; along with an extraordinary supporting cast including Mike Faist, who was in the first New York production of Dear Evan Hansen, as Sharks chieftain Riff.
DeBose, 30, started dancing as a toddler; appearing in her first Broadway show, Bring It On, at the age of 20. I caught her in that — and five other productions over the years, including the original Hamilton, at New York's Public Theater. Even in a dud like Summer, the ill-fated Donna Summer musical, she shone. She's been on screen, too: in Netflix's The Prom; and Apple+'s comedy series Schmigadoon.
But this was different. 'When Steven Spielberg calls you — I was having my nails done at the time — and asks you to be part of something like this, it is something you never forget, because of the journey I've had,' DeBose told me. 'Some folks might look at all the different things I've done and say: 'Oh, it's all been fairly easy.' But the reality is, yes, I've found success, and had opportunities — but none of it was easy. And it has not gotten easier, the higher I've climbed.'
DeBose was born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her Afro-Puerto Rican father 'was not a part of my life'. So her mother Gina, a teacher, brought her up on her own. The pair would spend hours watching Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. 'Her presence just took over the screen,' she declares, still in awe.
Growing up, she struggled to find her identity. She didn't feel particularly Latina — yet 'I didn't feel black enough. My mother is white...but I didn't feel white enough either.
'I feel like a Trail Mix sometimes! If you think about Trail Mix, you've got your cashews, your peanuts, your cranberries. I'm made up of a lot of different things. Finding ways to honour that is a lifelong journey. And I want people to know it's OK to go on that journey.'
No wonder she felt it was vital to portray Anita as 'a woman with guts, with every possible emotion'.
Events in West Side Story play out over a tumultuous 48 hours. 'That's not a lot of time to watch what these characters go through. Then you look at Anita's journey and it's like: 'Whoa, Sis!'
'This takes place in 1957,' she continued. 'And to watch a woman who knows her own mind, who speaks up, who's striving to assimilate — which might not have been a popular choice at the time — striving to make a better life, and doing it unapologetically...' she tapers off.
Moreno reveals in a new documentary, Just A Girl Who Decided to Go For It, that she was attacked in some quarters for the views Anita expresses in the song America. 'She doesn't want no part of Puerto Rico. She's an American now,' the 89-year-old legend says.
In the new film, she plays the widow of drug store owner Doc, and her scenes with DeBose are some of the best and most powerful, in one of the year's best and most powerful pictures. I have a feeling both will be Oscar nominated — in the same, best supporting actress category.
In my mind, I keep coming back to that iconic song, America. How did DeBose prepare for that one? 'If you think about it too much, you'd die of an anxiety attack,' she said. 'It was fascinating, actually, because of the state of the world we're in. And the lyrics, even in their simplest form...they're still true.'
She starts to sing it for me: 'Life can be bright in America, if you can fight in America...' She doesn't complete the verse, which continues: 'Life is all right in America, if you're all white in America.'
She and I are conversing in a giant marquee, in the middle of Hertfordshire, where DeBose is appearing in a new film directed by Matthew Vaughn, alongside Bryce Dallas Howard, Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Catherine O'Hara, Samuel L. Jackson, Dua Lipa and John Cena. It's a mammoth budget spy thriller, in which she plays Keira, a 'super-spy
