NaTasha Yvette Williams Talks ‘Some Like It Hot’ Ahead Of Tonys (Exclusive)

Ariana DeBose
75th Annual Tony Awards, Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA- 12 Jun 2022 — Image Credit: Marc J Franklin

NaTasha Yvette Williams is simply as electrifying as she opens Some Like Hot as she is when she closes the Broadway present, and each second in between when she is on the stage on the Shubert Theater. The theater mainstay encapsulates the function of Sweet Sue, an empowering but strict band chief taking a gaggle of girls from Chicago to California to carry out within the midst of prohibition and the Nineteen Thirties. While Sweet Sue was not a essential function within the well-known 1959 MGM/UA characteristic movie of the identical title which starred Marilyn Monroe, the artistic crew made “intentional” updates to the manufacturing which introduced NaTasha’s function to the ‘epicenter’ of the present. “I like to say she’s the glue of the show!” NaTasha laughed, whereas chatting on the HollywoodLife Podcast as a part of the Tony Contenders collection. “People revolve around her and she thinks she’s in control of stuff, but she’s really very dependent on the women and they sort of keep her going as well. They give to her as much as she gives to them.”

Some Like It Hot leads this 12 months’s Tony Award nominations with a whopping 13 nods, together with NaTasha for Best Actress in a Featured Role In A Musical, and for her, the popularity has been a very long time coming. “It’s been a journey,” she recalled, her eyes welling up. “My first time I was in a Broadway show was 2006, and I was eligible at that time when I started the show because the Tony’s had a ‘First Replacement’ category, but by the time the Tony’s came around that year, they had done away with the category…So that was 17 years ago, and I’ve been in eight Broadway shows since, four of them original casts and four of them replacements.” The subsequent time NaTasha was eligible, she broke her foot the evening earlier than opening and couldn’t carry out. For Porgy & Bess, the competitors was simply too fierce and within the 2022 season, her character in her Broadway play debut ‘Chicken & Biscuits’ was too small and got here in late within the present.

NaTasha Yvette Williams alongside Adrianna Hicks and Angie Schworer in ‘Some Like It Hot.’ (Marc J Franklin)

“It’s been a journey for me waiting and I’m always like, ‘Maybe the next one will be when I can be nominated,’ or maybe the next year or next show. So, next year finally came this year…it’s worthy of my tears, I think,” NaTasha informed HL, wiping some away. Ahead of the June eleventh occasion, the star admitted she has had an awards acceptance speech written since she was 15 years previous. “I think when I turned 15, my mother and I, we perfected the speech. Up until then, we were practicing it. I would say, ‘Oh when I win my Grammy,’ or ‘when I win my Oscar…’ I don’t know that I said Tony’s a lot, because all I knew at that time was television and movies and music,” she recalled. “Anyway, we wrote a speech and I would stand up and thank my aunts and uncles and my mother would always say, ‘Oh, you have to thank all the little people!’ I remember this. That’s what my mother said. You have to thank all the little people.”

NaTasha continued, “I would say that as we would practice this speech, and I’m realizing now, as an adult, that there are so many little people that are giants… my babysitters, and people that pick up my kids or the people that help me with my lines, my husband and all of those people that my mother and I just sort of joked about and were just having this bonding time together… But these little people are so big.”

NaTasha Yvette Williams in ‘Some Like It Hot.’ (Marc J Franklin)

The mom of 4 went on to say that it doesn’t matter what she “already feels like [she’s] won.” “Whether my name is called or not, really they don’t even have to call it… Just right now, with this feeling and with this realization that the things I’ve talked about for almost 50 years are coming to fruition, that’s winning. And while my mother is in heaven, I know she’s with me,” NaTasha gushed. “And I have to thank the little people at some point during this time, bwcause they’re holding me up always.”

You can see NaTasha star as Sweet Sue on the Shubert Theater in Some Like It Hot now!

NaTasha Yvette Williams is a part of HollywoodLife’s Tony Contenders collection, wherein we interview the largest present stars on Broadway who’re in rivalry for the upcoming Tony Awards on June 11, 2023.