{"id":2393018,"date":"2026-04-28T15:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T15:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2393018"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T15:16:13","slug":"the-obamas-kim-kardashian-and-other-a-listers-are-now-broadway-co-producers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-obamas-kim-kardashian-and-other-a-listers-are-now-broadway-co-producers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Obamas, Kim Kardashian and Other A-Listers Are Now Broadway Co-Producers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 2020, the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers spurred a wave of calls for change in many sectors of society, including the arts. Theaters were closed at the time because of the coronavirus pandemic, but when they reopened, there was a significant increase<\/a> in work by Black writers; and a number of celebrities, many but not all of them Black, stepped forward to co-produce those shows, hoping that their influence would help attract media attention and ticket buyers.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Blair Underwood<\/strong> co-produced \u201cPass Over,\u201d about two Black men trapped by fear of a police encounter; Kandi Burruss<\/strong> co-produced \u201cThoughts of a Colored Man,\u201d about a day in the life of a group of Black men; and Nick Jonas<\/strong> and Priyanka Chopra Jonas<\/strong> co-produced \u201cChicken & Biscuits,\u201d a comedy set in a Black church.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a Black woman, I thought it was important to see more diversity in the Broadway community,\u201d said Burruss, who has since produced four more shows, including this season\u2019s \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d revival. Burruss said she promotes her shows to potential ticket buyers and introduces the lead producers to potential investors.<\/p>\n

In 2022, the dam burst open with \u201cA Strange Loop,\u201d a musical about a gay Black man\u2019s journey of self-discovery. The show had already won a Pulitzer Prize<\/a> but was still a tough sell to audiences. The lead producer lined up a large group of boldfaced names as co-producers, including RuPaul Charles<\/strong>, Alan Cumming<\/strong>, Ilana Glazer<\/strong>, Mindy Kaling<\/strong>, Billy Porter<\/strong> and Steven Spielberg<\/strong>, as well as Cheadle and Hudson.<\/p>\n

A 2023 revival of \u201cPurlie Victorious,\u201d a 1961 play by Ossie Davis, followed the \u201cStrange Loop\u201d model, with multiple celebrity co-producers, including LaTanya Richardson Jackson<\/strong>, Samuel L. Jackson<\/strong>, Phylicia Rashad<\/strong> and Kerry Washington<\/strong>, as well as the play\u2019s star, Leslie Odom Jr.<\/strong>, and Alan Alda<\/strong>, who was in the play\u2019s original production.<\/p>\n

\u201cBroadway is a big deal,\u201d Burruss said, \u201cand I feel like people who are celebrities want to be in that space.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nytimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2020, the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers spurred a wave of calls for change in many sectors of society, including the arts. Theaters were closed at the time because of the coronavirus pandemic, but when they reopened, there was a significant increase in work by Black writers; and a number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2393019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[420115,363961,466869,466870,21751,386955,398908,366518,466872,376846,466871,343608,340409,340264,466874,368361,346675,327641,52293,384607,79962,24047,365090,309297,466873,305971,363960],"class_list":["post-2393018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-barack","tag-bowen-1990","tag-box-office-sales","tag-burruss","tag-celebrities","tag-cynthia","tag-erivo","tag-eva","tag-fatone","tag-joey","tag-kandi","tag-kardashian","tag-kim","tag-lena","tag-matt-comedian","tag-michelle","tag-obama","tag-patrick","tag-perry","tag-price","tag-rogers","tag-theater","tag-theater-broadway","tag-tyler","tag-waithe","tag-wilson","tag-yang"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/The-Obamas-Kim-Kardashian-and-Other-A-Listers-Are-Now-Broadway.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2393020,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393018\/revisions\/2393020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2393019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}