Tituss Burgess on Returning to Broadway for Moulin Rouge!—'It’s Been a Turbulent Learning Curve'

After a 14-year absence, the force of nature that is Tituss Burgess is back on Broadway.

Burgess is playing top-hatted impresario Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge! through December 17, having taken over the role from current cast member Eric Anderson. Anderson will return to the role on December 19; Boy George will sashay into the role for a limited engagement from Tuesday, February 6, 2024 to Sunday, May 12.

“This cast is honestly the family and community that I never knew I needed or wanted,” Burgess tells The Broadway Show. “I'm so grateful. It's quite literally loving me back to life and it's a good feeling.”

He fully expected to “just waltz on in” to the role, he says. That’s not what happened. “It’s been a turbulent learning curve,” he admits, “but I've begun to integrate it in a way that is starting to serve me and the piece, and I'm starting to have fun in a way that I didn't anticipate having. That's my truth. And I'm sticking by it.”

Burgess made his Broadway debut as Eddie in Good Vibrations in 2005. (“Which no one saw,” he says. “But that’s OK.”) After roles in Jersey Boys and The Little Mermaid, his last role on Broadway was in the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls, where he played Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Since then, of course, he has risen to fame as the character Titus Andromedon in the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, earning five Emmy noms for the role. “I don't take it lightly that I've been able to cross-pollinate,” he says, “And I quite love being tasked with the responsibility every night to transport people from one place to another.”

Broadway audiences have welcomed Burgess back, to say the least. “I didn't anticipate the audible gasp from the audience when I opened my mouth to sing ‘Chandelier,’” he says. “But now I'm used to it. Now it's fun, now I crave it. You know what I mean?”