MJ Rodriguez on a Heavenly Off-Broadway Debut as Angel in Rent

Age & Hometown: 20; Newark, NJ

Current Role: An off-Broadway debut as Angel, the endearing drag performer and emotional cornerstone of Rent.

Born to Sing: Though her first public performance was in first grade (a solo of “Auld Lang Syne”), Rodriguez found her voice long before that. “It all started when I was 11 months old, singing a song by Jodeci in the back seat of the car,” she says, laughing over the now-defunct boy band. “My mother turned around and said, ‘Who is that?’ When she saw it was me, she said, ‘I think we have a singer on our hands.’” By age 11, Rodriguez found an artistic home at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, which led to a summer program at Berklee College of Music in Boston. “I knew this was the place I wanted to be,” she recalls, and enrolled for two semesters before getting her off-Broadway break.

Just Call Me Angel: Rodriguez first encountered Angel Schunard when she and her father saw the 2005 movie version of Rent, which re-created Wilson Jermaine Heredia’s Tony-winning performance. “I turned to my father and said, ‘I want to play Angel.’ And he said, ‘In due time.’” Five years later, the young performer got her first shot at the role in a youth production of Rent at NJPAC. By then, she’d morphed from Michael Anthony Rodriguez Jr. into MJ. (No periods, please!) The inspiration? Not Michael Jackson or Jordan, but Spider-Man’s Mary Jane Watson. “The first time they called her MJ, I thought, ‘That’s a cool name!’ I put ‘Michael’ and ‘Junior’ together, and it worked perfectly.”

Keep Dreaming: Cast in the first NYC revival of Rent, Rodriguez admits she felt nervous about playing a role associated so strongly with Heredia. “Those are big shoes to fill, and people expect to see the same thing they’ve seen before,” she notes. It helped that director Michael Greif encouraged her to put a new spin on the character. “He said, ‘This Angel is going to be a little more androgynous—more of a club kid and less comic relief.’” Rodriguez already has her next big dream in sight: a role on Glee. “When it first came on, I said to my mom, ‘I’ve gotta be on that show.’ I have no idea what I would play, but it doesn’t matter.” Recalling dad’s earlier response, she adds, “I’m praying it will happen…in due time.”