Nik Walker Never Thought He Would Do Musicals, Now He's Dancing and Singing in Ain't Too Proud

Age: 32

Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts 

Current Role: Nik Walker joined the cast of Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations as Otis Williams on February 28, 2020, replacing original star Derrick Baskin. Williams is a founding member of The Temptations, who narrates the jukebox musical about the group whose hits include "My Girl," "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)" and "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone."

Credits: Walker, who had no intentions of pursuing a career in musicals, started out doing Shakespeare in regional theaters. He then made his Broadway debut as an ensemble replacement in Motown the Musical  in 2013. When the show returned for an encore staging in 2016, he understudied the role of Berry Gordy and Marvin Gaye. Later, he joined the Broadway cast of Hamilton as an ensemble member and understudy. In 2018, Walker originated the role of Aaron Burr in Hamilton’s national tour.

“My interest in theater came about because of Mark Twain. In the second grade, I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and, for some reason, I wrote a little play about Tom Sawyer. It was completely ridiculous, but we performed it at school." 

“At New York University, I had a teacher who would say that Shakespeare is your training wheels for theater. If you can do Shakespeare, you can do anything. I would say Hamilton is right up there. I wouldn’t be able to do Ain't too Proud if I hadn't done it. Hamilton is verse, and I came into it being like, ‘I can't rap, but I can certainly do heightened verse.’ The text is so dense, so beautiful and layered. It was three years of a master class.”

“I love pushing people's buttons. My favorite theater pieces tend to be the those that put you in a room and make you face down an uncomfortable truth. The play that defined my life, and I'm sure so many young, Black men have the same response, was Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks. In Ain’t Too Proud, you get a story of these young Black men trying to figure out their lives, asking hard questions and not necessarily answering them. That, to me, is the best use of a theater space. Yes, give people the bread and circuses, but there's also a way to get them to think a little bit.”

"The thing is, I can't dance. [Motown] was looking for a swing. To this day, I'm not sure how [I did Motown] because I cannot dance.  They needed somebody who could sing high, because they had to cover the Eddie Kendricks track and a bunch of other tracks that sang high. Warren Adams, who's one of the choreographers, came up to me and was like, 'Look, here's the deal. I'm going to put you into bootcamp with my associate. They're going to teach you how to dance. You need to learn it because we need you to do this.' I have never been more terrified in my life—musicals were not where I was going. I sang, I did musicals in college but that was just for fun. Thinking back on it, what I'm very proud of myself for is the work I did outside of that. My wife can tell you, I was up until 2AM in my bathroom just busting out moves, trying to figure it out, because it was a challenge. That's how I found myself settled in Motown—I just rose to the challenge."

“What I love about the shows that I’ve chosen: Motown, Hamilton, Ain’t Too Proud, even Peter and the Starcatcher [in which Walker appeared off-Broadway]—is the through line of bringing dimensionality to people who we thought we knew. I’ve had so many conversations with some who are like, ‘People of color are really getting out there right now.’ It’s not about that. What’s more important is that people see we are multifaceted people. That goes for race, gender, sexual orientation. When I was growing up, coming to Broadway, I was either going to be playing a sharecropper or a hyena. Now yes, there’s a bunch of people playing musicians and pop artists, but you’ve also got people playing presidents. The point of this moment is to say all stories are powerful. All stories are lucrative.”

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.