Hot off the hit Toronto premiere of Kinky Boots
, Alan Mingo Jr. returns to Broadway as Lola, and New York audiences are going wild for it. BroadwayBox caught up with the Rent and Little Mermaid alum to talk about leading the Tony-winning Best Musical, dressing room must-haves, and his inner Dynasty diva.1. Hashtag to describe my Lola:
#Fierce
2. The part of the 'becoming Lola process' that I finally feel her each night:
There's many processes—when the makeup gets done it's one level, the wig is the second, and she is complete when the first full dress is on.
3. Three things I have to have in my Kinky Boots dressing room:
Swedish fish, Red Bull, LaSonya (my makeup artist).
4. The biggest difference between the Toronto run and the Broadway run:
Biggest difference: the audiences. Here we get people from around the world. In Toronto, they get tourists, yes, but the community sees the show. In Toronto, I would get stopped on the street when my hair's not done with a "LOLA!" but in Harlem nobody does that... that's a good thing.
5. The thing Kinky Boots taught me about myself:
It made me reanalyze my own preconceptions and my own biases—it made me open my eyes to see that even though, as a black gay man, I thought I was the most liberal, but there was still a lot more work that I needed to do as a human being in that regard.
6. Fictional character who I consider my spirit animal:
Dominique Deveraux from Dynasty ... or Joan Crawford.
7. First Broadway album I was really obsessed with:
Rent, but it took me a while to get there.
8. Part I played when I was younger that I’d love to revisit now:
Prospero from The Winter's Tale.
9. My English accent idol that I’m serving you in Kinky Boots:
Mine's more of a...bastardized American stage standard technique...
10. The best part and the hardest part of being Lola:
Best: Playing a role that you know does not exist in the musical theater world and being thankful every day that you're able to do it.
Hardest: Dancing in the six-inch heels. By far.
Strut your stuff over to Broadway's Al Hirschfeld Theatre to see Alan Mingo Jr. in 'Kinky Boots'.
