Leslie Uggams talks ‘Deadpool,’ ‘Empire,’ returning to ‘Millie’
“Hey, all you “Deadpool” and “Empire” fans. You know Leslie Uggams can act, but she sings, too.
Her outrageous characters Blind Al and Leah Walker have captured the imaginations of film and TV watchers who might have just heard of her from the landmark TV series “Roots” and tons of other screen roles. But the 75year-old actress has been singing on stage and screen since she was 6, and in 1968, she won a best musical actress Tony Award for her first Broadway show, “Hallelujah, Baby!”
When offers come in these days acting has overtaken singing. But not this week, when she joins Pittsburgh CLO to reprise her Broadway role as Muzzy Van Hossmere in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
“It’s fun to go out and get your pipes going again like this,” she says, seated in a CLO conference room one day into her return to Pittsburgh.
It’s also a chance to reconnect with Pittsburgh, where she first came as a child to sing at telethons. She returned over the years in tours and concerts and “some things associated with August Wilson, because once you do an August Wilson play, you’re family,” says the original Ruby in the Broadway production of “King Hedley II.” “There are a lot of memories here for me.”
She will be creating some new ones as Muzzy, a glamorous singer-actress who becomes Millie’s friend and mentor in the 1920s-set musical.
“I love Muzzy,” says Ms. Uggams, who describes her as “bigger than life. She’s a combination of all kinds of people who traveled all over the world. And then she fell in love, and unbeknownst to her, it turned out to be a millionaire.”
Singer-actress Uggams had planned to take a break when she was asked to play the role for director Charles Repole, whom she had enjoyed working with previously.
“My career has always been like that — somebody will give me a call, and there I go,” she says.
For the part of Blind Al, snarky confidante to Ryan Reynolds’ crass Deadpool, she got the call to audition without knowing anything about the Marvel antihero. There was a period after she was cast when only her husband, Grahame Pratt, shared the news. However, their son, Justice, guessed from the little she let slip.
“Mom, this is huuge!” he told her. It took Mr. Reynolds a decade to bring “Deadpool” to the screen, and then he had a hit on his hands. “Deadpool 2” — with Ms. Uggams back as Blind Al — enjoyed a $125 million opening weekend in May. She understands they had a hit on their hands when “all of a sudden my doormen looked at me in a different way. They’d been fans, but now it was like, ‘Whooooa!’”
Her scenes are all with Mr. Reynolds, and “he’s delicious; he’s such a sweetheart,” she says. “This humor just pours out of him, but otherwise he’s just a cool, kind of mellow guy,”
Now that she’s in Pittsburgh, it is somehow natural for the conversation to make a quick turn from Ryan Reynolds to August Wilson.
“I was so fortunate to have worked with him, and that was an incredible experience,” she said of the late Pittsburgh playwright. “He would sit at rehearsals with his eyes closed, and if you messed up a line, he’d go …” and she opens her eyes wide. “It would be, ‘Uh-oh, I said ‘the’ instead of ‘a.’”
She recounts what was supposed to be humming for her character became a few lyrics and then a whole song during rehearsals. “Each day, a little bit more and a little bit more — I was just thrilled!” she says.
If some fans today are surprised that Ms. Uggams is a singer, there was a time when people were just as surprised she could act. After the landmark TV miniseries “Roots,” no one questioned her skills anymore. She was nominated for a 1977 Emmy Award as Kizzy, who is born into slavery and passes along the dream of freedom to the next generation.
Ms. Uggams counts among her newer fans the avid followers of the Fox series “Empire.” Her role as the mother of Terrence Howard’s Lucius started small but kept growing. “I did murder somebody this season, so they put me back in the home and I don’t know what’s happening next,” she says with a grin. “Everybody murders somebody on that show, but for some reason, I’m being punished!”
She got a taste of Leah’s devotees while picking up her 8-year-old granddaughter Cassidy at school one day. She heard screaming coming from a bus, and she realized it was a bunch of teens who had recognized their favorite mad mama from “Empire.”
She can’t help but add that a lot of those young fans don’t know that she sings, even though, “It’s in my DNA.” But in case anyone is looking for evidence, “I’m all over YouTube,” she says.
She’s also about to be onstage in Pittsburgh, where anyone who comes to “Millie” will leave knowing that Leslie Uggams can sing.