Ariana DeBose is about to do her thing at the 2024 Tony Awards -- for the third time in a row. The Oscar winner is set to host the annual award ceremony for the third year on Sunday at New York's Lincoln Center. While she's no stranger to running the show at this point, the 33-year-old performer is also no stranger to the audience she's about to emcee.
That's because she's a Broadway star herself. The Hamilton alum got her professional start in theater more than a decade ago and has since earned her own Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical as Disco Donna in 2018's Summer: The Donna Summer Musical . The Prom actress went on to breakout Hollywood stardom as Anita in Steven Spielberg's West Side Story , earning her first Oscar nomination and win.
But on Sunday night, she'll be back in the company of her beloved theater comrades. "I love the community," she tells ET's Rachel Smith. "I got my start on Broadway.
I worked...
on Broadway for 10 years and it feels like home, so every year that I get the opportunity to come back, I'm really grateful." This year, however, she's adding an extra credit to her résumé as a producer of the award show. "It feels different, but again, it’s not that different.
I'm doing all the same things I used to do. I'm very hands-on anyways," she says. "But, you know, having a seat at the table, they're kinda forced to listen to me, but thankfully everyone at White Cherry [Entertainment] and I, we have a really great collaborative p.
