Spring Preview: Wayne Brady Will Use Your Love for Him Against You in The Wiz

Growing up in Orlando, Florida, Wayne Brady fell in love with Golden-Age movie musical fare along the lines of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahoma! and Singin’ in the Rain. “My grandmother raised me on a diet of PBS,” he told Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek on The Broadway Show, speaking in Los Angeles. “I'd never really seen a whole cast of faces that looked like me, singing with joy.”

The movie of The Wiz, directed by Sidney Lumet, blew his young mind like a Kansas tornado. Maybe, he thought, he could do something like that. “That touched me like nothing else. I really feel that that’s one of the things that got me started.”

There was no question in Brady’s mind that he wanted to be a part of The Wiz’s return to Broadway—what is sure to be, in his words, “a true Black history moment.” Still, he was at first nonplussed that the director Schele Williams wanted to cast him as the Wiz instead of the Scarecrow, Tinman or Lion. “When you're younger, you think of the Wiz as the old man part, right?” he said. “Oh, that's the very esteemed, older actor that has trotted out to accept that role. I don't want to be that guy. Am I that guy? I play video games. I'm not old!”

It wasn’t long before Brady signed on to Williams’ vision. “Without being creepy… I’m like an uncle,” he said. “[Dorothy’s] cool uncle.”

Whereas The Wiz’s pre-Broadway national tour kicked off in September 2023, Brady joined the tour in San Francisco in January, replacing Alan Mingo Jr. “There really wasn’t a chance to really get to know everybody,” he said. “You’re just thrown on stage together and have to build an instant trust. But what I love is, they were willing to do that. They were so accepting. ‘Come on, let’s play.’ Which is the theater way.”

One of Brady’s great strengths as a performer—on stage and on screen, including on the improvisational comedy television series Whose Line Is It Anyway?—is the ability to thoroughly win over an audience. On Broadway, he put his fluid, flexuous movements and 1,000-kilowatt smile to good use as Billy Flynn in Chicago and Lola in Kinky Boots. Even playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton in Chicago, he deployed the full force of his charisma. “My aim, even in Hamilton, was: You are going to love me. You are going to love Burr because you’re going to ‘get’ him.”

As Brady explained, playing the title role in The Wiz is not that different. When the character finally appears in the second act—after being hyped up for much of the first—he hits everyone with the old razzle-dazzle: “Hey, baby, let me sing for you. Let me make you feel good.”

The Wiz, of course, turns out to be a con artist and a jerk, intimidating and manipulating a teenage girl and her friends into dispatching one of his political opponents. “It’s almost criminal.” But the darkness is “what makes it interesting,” said Brady—and betraying the audience’s affections is its own kind of pleasure. “Taking the energy the audience feels, that they like you and they gravitate towards you… That makes it easy to then go…” Brady mimed a stabbing motion—a knife in the heart. “Sorry. But you still like me. And that is the coolest challenge in this role.”

The Broadway Show Credits: Directed by Zack R. Smith | Producers: Paul Wontorek and Beth Stevens | Senior Producers: Caitlin Moynihan and Lindsey Sullivan | Videographers: Alexander Elin Goyco, Brian Morgan