She is known by so many names: The original Angelica Schuyler in Broadway’s cultural phenomenon “Hamilton.” Mimi in the closing cast of “Rent.” Hela in the 2017 HBO drama about how a Virginia woman’s cancerous cells led to dozens of medical advancements in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”
But Renée Elise Goldsberry is, ultimately, a storyteller.
Whether she’s playing an intelligent woman who commands attention and respect (Angelica in “Hamilton”), a feisty attorney (Geneva Pine in “The Good Wife,”) or making the rafters tremble when her volcanic voice erupts when she sings.
The Tony winner is sharing a new chapter of her career when she performs May 6 at Norfolk’s Chrysler Hall as part of the Virginia Arts Festival’s 25th anniversary season. In the one-night-only performance, she will sing Broadway songs from her shows, as well as soul classics and pop standards.
“Whether I’m doing a concert of my own music or a concert of someone else’s songs, the common theme is storytelling,” Goldsberry said during a phone interview from her Connecticut home. “The common theme of storytelling and putting on a show is that creation of that family, telling stories that remind people of what we have in common.”
In many ways, it appears that the evolution of Goldsberry’s career is one of her most important stories: At 51, and with more than two decades in TV, film and theater, she seems to be just getting started. She looks for roles that exude strength and perseverance.
She’s starring in the Peacock comedy series “Girls5eva,” in which she plays the hilarious, narcissistic diva Wickie. (Girls5eva is a 1990s girl group trying for a comeback while juggling cellulite, bills and family responsibilities.) She’s also in Marvel and Disney’s “She-Hulk,” to be released this year.
Goldsberry revels in playing strong characters who can be an example for not only middle-aged women but young girls, too. Even with the self-centeredness of Wickie, Goldsberry wants people to see a woman who is ambitious and refuses to give up on herself.
“Before anyone cared what I thought, I felt that I wanted girls, particularly women of color, to not feel diminished, sidelined or unprotected. I think we are powerful and vulnerable,” she said. “As a Black girl, I knew what messages were not inspiring. I don’t want to feed anyone a lie that they aren’t a center of a story.”
Goldsberry was born in California in 1971 and grew up in Houston and Detroit. She also grew up in a family that loved singing around the house and appreciated a good show — but most of them leaned into math and sciences (her father is a physicist and chemist; her mother, an industrial psychologist). She dove head first into performing.
She was only around 7 when a cousin told her that she could sang — not just sing — and got her to be her own little Aretha and perform when a good song came on the radio.
Her parents put her in theater school, and she became addicted to the stage when was 8 with her first production: singing in “Guys and Dolls.”
She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in acting, and then a master’s in vocal jazz performance from the University of Southern California. She quickly started landing acting roles, in “Ally McBeal” and the soap opera “One Life to Live” (for which she received two Daytime Emmy nods).
Her Broadway credits started, too, including Nala in “The Lion King” in 1997; originating the role of Nettie in “The Color Purple” in 2005; and playing Kate in “Good People” in 2011, working opposite Oscar winner Frances McDormand.
She has said in interviews that it was also her training for Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park, and the lyrical gymnastics it demanded, that primed her for the lightning-quick rap and wit of her most popular role, in “Hamilton.”
Even with all of her successes — career, husband, two children — Goldsberry said she takes nothing for granted.
“If there’s anything, we have learned that we know less than what we thought,” she said of the past couple of years. “We keep realizing we know even less than that. That’s true for everybody and I’m not different.”
She paused and remembered a piece of advice a friend once gave her.
He told her that when “you’re up to bat, you can panic about all the balls heading toward you and worry, or pick a good one and concentrate on hitting it out of the park.”
She has, and that’s the moral of her story.
Denise M. Watson, 757-446-2504, denise.watson@pilotonline.com
