Maleah Joi Moon’s Broadway debut in Alicia Keys musical Hell’s Kitchen nabs Tony nomination

NEW YORK – Maleah Joi Moon has come a long way in a short time.

Just a few years ago, she was a theatre kid in suburban New Jersey, listening to her dad’s Alicia Keys records, starring in a high school production of Rent and waiting outside a Broadway stage door hoping to meet the cast of Waitress.

Now, at 21, she is a Leading Actress Tony Awards nominee for her Broadway debut as the star of the new semi-autobiographical Alicia Keys musical Hell’s Kitchen, which opened in April and scored a leading 13 nominations at the 2024 Tony Awards, including for Best Musical.

That means she is working alongside the people she had just been fangirling over – getting vocal advice from and the occasional breakfast with American singer-songwriter Keys; honing her acting instincts with the show’s director Michael Greif, who directed Rent 28 years ago; and learning to manage an eight-show week from Shoshana Bean, the actress she stage-doored in Waitress, who has taken Moon under her wing while portraying her mother.

Moon’s confident performance – smoky voice, headstrong attitude, gestural dance moves – has caught the attention of critics.

“It’s surreal and it’s ridiculous and crazy and insane and all the things,” Moon said as she stood in Shubert Alley, just under a digital marquee featuring her atop a piano, not far from the stage door where she now signs autographs for her own fans.

“But my inner child – the one that wanted to be Nala (from The Lion King musical) on Broadway – is, like, this is aligned. It’s divine alignment. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t meant.”

Moon is dancing a delicate dance in Hell’s Kitchen, sort of playing Keys and sort of not.

The show is about a few formative months in the life of Ali, a 17-year-old girl chafing under her mother’s vigilance, hooking up with a street musician and discovering a gift for piano.

It is a fictionalised remix of Keys’ own childhood chapters, but it is partly Moon too. She has been with the show through developmental workshops and an off-Broadway production, and her personality and physicality, as well as her very recent adolescence, inform those of her character.

The musical is set at Manhattan Plaza, an affordable housing development where most units are subsidised for performing artists. Keys grew up there as the only child of a single mother who was an aspiring actress and dancer, although she wound up keeping food on the table by taking office jobs.

The complex’s two 46-floor towers are in Hell’s Kitchen – hence the musical’s name – a neighbourhood just west of Times Square that was rougher during the 1990s, when Keys was an adolescent, than it is now.

Moon was performing from an early age – in choir and band (she played trumpet and French horn) – but sixth grade was a turning point.

Her first stage role was playing Dorothy in a school production of The Wizard Of Oz – the same role Keys first played as a child.

Moon also got a taste of Broadway then – she auditioned for the role of young Nala in The Lion King, and although she did not get it, she did get a callback. She said: “I was, like, ‘I like this. Let’s keep doing it forever.’”

She threw herself into school productions, playing the title character in Annie, Princess Fiona in Shrek, a nun in Sister Act, Joanne in Rent, Little Red Riding Hood in Into The Woods, Peter in Peter And The Starcatcher and Maria in West Side Story. She was set to play Deena in Dreamgirls when the pandemic hit.

College was a tough chapter for Moon. She enrolled in Pace University to study musical theatre, but her first semester was online, and the second semester was hybrid, with social distancing and masks.

“It was super-weird – very dystopian,” she said.

She had been battling anxiety and depression since high school, and by midway through her sophomore year at college, it was more than she could manage.

“I wasn’t getting out of bed. I was missing class,” she said. “I had been dealing with depression for five years, and it got really bad.”

She moved in with her father and focused on “learning how to be a healthier person”.

“I did inpatient. I did outpatient and cognitive behavioural therapy. And I learnt that my depression is chemical,” she said. “I left school, I started working, and fell in love with working.”

She participated in workshops for stage productions and auditioned for the Broadway musical Six. After a Disney talent showcase, she decided to focus on screen work. But in late 2022, her agent suggested she audition for an Alicia Keys musical at The Public Theater, an off-Broadway powerhouse.

“It had already been in development for 10 years and it was Alicia’s baby. It was simultaneously the most nerve-racking because I didn’t want to do theatre any more, I had quit school and I felt so unequipped for something like that, and it was awesome,” she said.

Her father picked her up after the audition, and she remembers bawling in the car, saying, “I’m tired, and I don’t want to do theatre any more”.

But that is not how the Hell’s Kitchen team felt. Keys, who was also involved with the casting, said it was clear that Moon had “raw talent” – an ability to sing, dance and speak to the audience. “We workshopped for a considerable amount of time and, finally, I was, like, ‘This is it,’” Keys said. “And, man, were we right.”

Moon took it one chapter at a time. “I thought, we’ll do this project for four weeks, and then move on,” she said. “But then I thought, this feels good. My spirit felt like I was in the right place. And I was like, I need to do this for as long as they’ll let me.”

Hell’s Kitchen ran at The Public Theater from October 2023 to January 2024 – it was sold out and well-received.

Moon is now relishing her Broadway moment.

With the help of her castmates, she is learning how to manage the rigours of an eight-show week. “I stay home with my cat and my dog, and I drink tea and I watch Netflix and I steam (my vocal cords),” she said. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I try to stay out of the streets.”

But certain aspects of her life are changing quickly.

In March, she made her first late-night talk-show appearance, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In April, the show’s opening-night audience included former US First Lady Michelle Obama and American media personality Oprah Winfrey. And on May 6, she was a guest at the Met Gala, dressed by American brand Collina Strada.

As for her goals, Moon has lots of them – she wants to be a movie star, a mental health advocate and a singer-songwriter.

“Hell’s Kitchen is this beautiful starting point for me,” she said. “I want to be a songstress – I’ve been writing for a long time, but it has to come at the right time, and I don’t want to rush it. And I want to get back into film and TV. I want to do everything. That’s the hard part.” NYTIMES