Ariana DeBose is known for playing Anita in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 musical film ‘West Side Story‘, for which she won a Golden Globe. She has also performed on Broadway in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s experiment, ‘Hamilton’. 

DeBose is also nominated for a Critics’ Choice and Screen Actors Guild Award. 

“It’s wild! Because I have been working [for a long time]. This experience makes me feel as if I’ve been hiding away on Broadway,” DeBose told Variety after receiving her SAG nomination on Wednesday. 

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DeBose comes from Broadway. She made her  debut in 2011 in the original production of “Bring It On” as Nautica. And then followed it up with ‘Mowtown’ and the revival of ‘Pippin’. 

After her stint with ‘Hamilton’, in which she starred alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda, DeBose portrayed Jane in ‘A Bronx Tale’ from 2016 to 2017. She then earned a nomination for best featured actress in a musical at the 72nd Annual Tony Awards for the role of Disco Donna in “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.”  

When asked what she wishes she had more chances to speak about, DeBose said that she speaks dance better than she speaks English. 

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“I’m someone who has fought very hard to be taken seriously as an actor. But I also believe, in the same breath, that dance is one of the things in my toolkit as an actor. I think that’s part of my mission, to bring dance to film in a different way so we can have different conversations about how dance can actually be a really beautiful method of storytelling, and you can get to know a person through their movement.”

DeBose’s on-screen work includes Ryan Murphy’s Netflix movie ‘The Prom’, in which she starred alongside Meryl Streep. Last year, she featured in AppleTV+ hit “Schmigadoon!”