James Monroe Iglehart Savors His 'Big' Success in Memphis

Age: “I’m 35 and very proud of it.”

Hometown: Hayward, California

Currently: Giving a scene-stealing performance as Bobby, a janitor whose newfound belief in himself culminates in the show-stopping song “Big Love,” in the Broadway musical Memphis.

Glee-ful Beginnings: Young James began singing in church at age four, encouraged by his actor dad and music teacher mom. “I wanted to become a rapper,” he recalls, but his path changed when he joined the high school show choir. “It was kind of like Glee, as nerdy as that sounds,” Iglehart says. “I just felt, ‘Oh my god, I can do this.’ And not only did I find myself, I found my future wife in show choir.” (More on their romance later.) After winning a scholarship to a local branch of Cal State, Iglehart tried his first musical, playing “second cowboy from the left” in Oklahoma! Again, his response was swift: “I said, ‘This is something I can do,’ and I pursued it from then on.”

Five Years in Memphis: Like many of his Broadway co-stars, Iglehart has a long history with Memphis, beginning when the show made a developmental stop at the actor’s Bay Area home base, TheatreWorks Palo Alto, in 2004. Composer David Bryan and lyricist Joe DiPietro were so impressed with his performance, they transformed a ballad called “Two Minutes of Your Love” into a lively dance number with wink-wink lyrics such as “Call me Big Daddy ’cause Big Daddy got big love!” Says Iglehart, “David and Joe saw how large I am and the energy I have, and they reworked the whole song around me.” The number became so popular, there’s even a “Big Love” T-shirt on sale at the Shubert Theatre.

Speaking of Big…: “When I was thin, I didn’t get any work,” Iglehart claims with a chuckle. “Then I got a little huskier, and all of a sudden I started working a lot. I had a checkup to make sure I was okay, and they said, ‘You’re fine—you’re kind of like a football player.’ And I said, ‘Beautiful!’ Some women want a cuddly guy, and that’s me; I’m totally cool with that. Everybody can’t have washboard abs. My goal is to be People magazine’s first Sexiest Man Alive with no abs whatsoever.”

I Do! One woman who definitely prefers “the cuddly type” is Iglehart’s wife, Dawn, the girl he met in show choir 19 years ago. She abandoned singing after high school to become a molecular biologist. “One of us had to have a real job!” he says with a laugh. And yet the couple married only eight years ago. What took them so long? "Me! I was being a guy; I was afraid. Dawn and I were friends for a long time, even though she tells me she always knew she was going to marry me. When I was about 25, my mother said, ‘You’re always talking about finding a girl like Dawn. Why don’t you marry her?’ I started looking at Dawn in a completely different way and just fell in love with her. It was like the whole world opened up. She’s everything I want.”

Lion’s Share: Iglehart built his New York stage career gradually, through word of mouth: Memphis co-star Derrick Baskin, an original cast member in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, recommended him for the role of Mitch Mahoney in the San Francisco company, which transferred to Broadway in 2007. He snagged an audition to play the Lion in Encores!’ summer 2009 production of The Wiz after joining director Thomas Kail’s hip-hop improv group Freestyle Love Supreme. In fact, Iglehart never even had an agent until Memphis booked its Broadway engagement. “I was taught that if you’re nice, people will remember you and tell other people about you—and that’s exactly what’s happened in my career,” he says modestly. “It all kind of fell into place.”