He keeps movin’ on
CMU graduate Leslie Odom Jr. plays Sam Cooke
If you’re a Pittsburgher planning on checking out “One Night in Miami” this weekend on Amazon Prime, make sure you pay particularly close attention to one of the four legends conversing in the room where it happens.
Leslie Odom Jr., most famous for his Tony-winning performance as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” portrays singer Sam Cooke in the Regina King-directed adaptation of Kemp Powers’ 2013 play about a fictional-but-reality-based discussion between Cooke, football star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and boxing great Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree).
Not only is Mr. Odom a Carnegie Mellon alum and increasingly sought-after movie star, he is currently leading the nomination odds for best supporting actor at the 2021 Academy Awards on awards-season prediction site GoldDerby.
He certainly hasn’t forgotten his time in Pittsburgh, where he was classmates with fellow stage and screen stars Josh Gad, Katy Mixon, Josh Groban and Griffin Matthews. Mr. Odom delivered the keynote address to CMU’s 2019 graduating class, urging those in attendance to make sure “your actions line up behind your intention” in all endeavors.
“One Night in Miami” also has a Pittsburgh connection, as it enjoyed a late 2019 run at City Theatre, making it one of City’s last pre-pandemic shows.
“It’s a very quintessential City Theatre kind of story,” director Reginald L. Douglas told the PostGazette in November 2019. “It takes history and reimagines it for the present. It tackles big themes, such as Black masculinity and Black legacy, and has the power of
re-evaluating America’s past through a very human story.”
Mr. Powers also talked to the Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier around that time about how “One Night in Miami” reveals the realities of celebrity long before the social media age.
“We exist in a time right now where we’re very privy to the private lives of celebrities,” he said. “Social media, Instagram, in many cases we can communicate directly with a lot of celebrities. Back then, being famous, there was a wall up, an air of mystery around a celebrity. So I wanted to explore this idea of, whoever you have to be in public, what happens when you’re in this private space?” As for Mr. Odom, he told the Post-Gazette in a 2018 interview that “one of the things I hope separates me as a performer is ... I use characters to reveal part of myself.”
Judge for yourself how much he imbued into Cooke, and we’ll see how that plays out for him during awards season.