Jordan Barrow Auditioned for Boq Five Times, Now He's Making History in Wicked on Broadway

Name: Jordan Barrow

Hometown: Ellicott City, Maryland

Credits: Barrow is making his Broadway debut as Boq in Wicked, making history as the first Black actor to take on the role full-time at the Gershwin Theatre. 

"I did my first show when I was in the third grade. I played Charlie Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and I think my mom just put me into theater camp because I enjoyed talking, quite frankly. I got bit by the bug."

"My first Broadway obsession was probably Wicked. A friend of mine recently said, 'You remember that you would always show us different 'Defying Gravity' [performances] on YouTube?' That was the thing that we did, we watched Wicked videos."

"Bowing on Broadway is like nothing you can ever recreate. It was out of body. It was insanity. Being in Wicked right now feels like everything is so much bigger than me. Director Joe Mantello came back in and rehearsed with the cast in September, and there is just a new life in the show. It has felt like such a joy."

"I would tell 14-year-old Jordan that he was going to be Boq, and it was not going to happen at any moment he thought it was going to and that the last very moment he thought it was going to happen, it would. I had been in for Boq five different times, and 14-year-old Jordan would say, 'Why didn't you give up after the first?' I would say, 'Because you just never know.'"

Watch the interview below, and head here to check your local listings for The Broadway Show. Hosted by Emmy-winning anchor Tamsen Fadal and powered by Broadway.com, it is the only nationally syndicated weekly theater news program.