Getting a Tony nomination after 40 years in the business is the perfect time, “Hell’s Kitchen” star Kecia Lewis says.
“If it had happened when I was younger, I would have been all about, ‘I’m winning’ and ‘People see me’ and ‘Isn’t this cool?’ But now, I’m grateful and it’s different.”
Forty years ago, Lewis made her Broadway debut in “Dreamgirls.” She understudied the lead role and got to play it countless times. “It was theater magic,” Lewis says. “The audience doesn’t understand how it happens on stage in front of their eyes, but I was learning and it gave me greater appreciation for all the people working backstage. Without them, actors can’t do their jobs well. It was a big discovery about theater and how collaborative it is.”
Kecia Lewis plays a pianist who teaches Ali (Maleah Joi Moon) in "Hell's Kitchen," a new musical on Broadway.
For much of those 40 years, Lewis has been on stage, starring in musicals (“Once on This Island,” “Cinderella” and “The Drowsy Chaperone”), plays (“Children of a Lesser God”), and filling in the gaps with television appearances. “I look at television and theater as the same sport, but using difference muscles,” she says. “I’m a working-class actor. You try writing, voiceover, editing – all kinds of things that are adjacent to performing.”
“Hell’s Kitchen,” however, is the show that could let Lewis leave an indelible mark. In it, she plays Miss Liza Jane, the piano teacher who takes a young girl named Ali (loosely based on Alicia Keys) under wing and gets her started in music. She's nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, one of 13 nods for the production.
Lewis began with the show in 2021 when it was just a workshop. She did an online reading, met Keys (whose music forms the basis for the show) and learned what went into “Perfect Way to Die,” her Act One rouser.
“She told me Miss Liza Jane was not real person but a combination of several teachers that she had…that helped me to have some freedom in creating what I wanted.”
Chief among her concerns: Playing the piano on stage. “I had maybe 10 lessons over the summer and they gave me videos of the pianist playing what she plays so I could mimic it.”
Kecia Lewis is nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in "Hell's Kitchen."
That added to the character’s veracity and helped set up the drama that comes in the show’s second act.
Maleah Joi Moon, who plays Ali, “does a stellar job for the kind of rock she has to roll up a hill every day. I’m amazed at the way she handles it with the grace that she does.”
When Lewis started in “Dreamgirls,” she wasn’t aware of what a Broadway show required. “You have to take care of yourself in order to do eight shows over six days in a week. Sometimes I did OK, sometimes I did poorly and other times I paid for it. You have to learn you can’t go out every night.”
Lewis shares those 40 years of wisdom if younger members of the cast ask. “I’d call myself an annoying mama. I do try to speak to them only if they ask me something…unless I see something really egregious going on and then I’m like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, watch it. That’s not how you work in theater.’”
While Lewis performed on two Tony Awards telecasts, this will be her first as a nominee “and I’m looking forward to that. It’s a completely different experience.”
She’ll go with her manager “and it will be a great moment for both of us. He’s been working hard and I’ve been working hard. It’s just a celebration. I’m just trying to take it all in stride and think about other people, not just myself.”
“Hell’s Kitchen” is at the Shubert Theatre in New York. It’s nominated for 13 Tony Awards.
