Broadway legend André De Shields doesn't walk, he floats

**Terry Gross** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. When Andre De Shields' name is mentioned, it's often preceded by the words Broadway Legend or The Great. He won a Tony for his performance in the musical Hadestown in 2019, and the show won seven other Tonys, including Best Musical. Stars of the original Broadway cast, including De Shields, reunited for a revival of the show last year in London. That production was filmed and will be released in theaters on Friday. Right now, De Shields is one of the stars of CATS, The Jellicle Ball, which won three Tonys last month. It uses the same songs as CATS, but with different beats, and is set in the queer underground ballroom culture of the 80s. That show is closing August 8th. De Shields is especially remarkable considering he's 80 and has been HIV positive since 1991
He grew up in Baltimore in what he describes as the innermost part of Baltimore's inner city, and figured getting an education would be key to getting out. He earned his BA in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and an MA in African American Studies from NYU. He started his career in experimental theater in Chicago. When his theater group performed in New York, he decided to stay. He soon got cast as The Wizard in the 1975 original Broadway cast of The Wiz, which was produced a few years before the movie. He was nominated for a Tony for his performance in the show Ain't Misbehavin, which was built around music associated with Fats Waller, and he won an Emmy when it was produced for a 1982 NBC broadcast. He was nominated for another Tony for his performance in The Full Monty.
He's performed in a wide range of dramas, including King Lear, Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman.
Let's start with Andre De Shields singing the opening number of Hadestown in which he sets up the story and introduces the characters. The show tells a version of the Greek myths about Hades, Hermes, Orpheus, and Eurydice. De Shields plays Hermes, the god who escorts the souls of the dead to the underworld, which is ruled by Hades. Here's De Shields from the original Broadway cast recording.
Fresh Air, congratulations on all the things that you're doing now. I just think it's great. Did you ever believe that despite having being diagnosed with HIV in 1991, and believing that you had it considerably before that, but you just didn't have the diagnosis, that you'd not only live to see age 80, but that you'd be in a new film version of a musical you'd won a Tony for, and at the same time, you'd be on Broadway as one of the stars of CATS, The Jellicle Ball?

**André De Shields** (3:46)
Well, the answer to that question is yes.

**Terry Gross** (3:50)
And my answer to that is no.

**André De Shields** (3:55)
I believed from my very first conscious thought that my destiny would rise up and meet me. So when my mother shared with me that her lifelong dream had been to be a chorus girl, and that was the term she used, she didn't say dancer, she said chorus girl.
And my father shared with me that he had always wanted to be a singer. He had a beautiful tenor voice, but the closest he got to that dream coming true was to sing in the church choir. Those two bits of knowledge only reaffirmed what I had been dreaming about since the day I was born. I wanted to sing, I wanted to dance. Now I can look at it and understand, oh wow, it's been bequeathed to me by those X and Y chromosomes that was responsible for my conception.

**Terry Gross** (5:04)
HIV when you had it in 91, it was a death sentence.
You had two partners who died of AIDS and friends as well, cast members who you work with. So you really thought you were going to be on Broadway at the age of 80?

**André De Shields** (5:21)
I didn't think I was going to be on Broadway at the age of 80, but I did know that I would be alive. And I did know that I would continue on my path.
And I had already in 1980, before there was an acronym HIV, that I had had an infection of my lymph nodes. And not any one of three doctors on two continents could answer the question, what is this?
Now, in 1979, when I had gone to London for the first time, to perform in Ain't Misbehavin, there was already a friend of mine who caught a cold. And three days later, he was dead. So the mystery was already in the air. How can someone die from a cold? There's something going on that nobody understands. So when my lymph nodes blew up, in 1980, in Los Angeles, on the tour of Ain't Misbehavin, I clocked it immediately. Whatever that mystery is, I'm beginning to decode it. I'm beginning to understand it.