L Morgan Lee’s historical Broadway run began with Facebook. That’s where the actress received a message in 2014 asking her to read for “A Strange Loop,” an unknown work from an emerging playwright named Michael R. Jackson.
The musical has become a cultural phenomenon in the years since. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2019, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020, had a limited D.C. engagement after that and opened on Broadway last year. That production ended Jan. 15 with the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book.
The show tells the story of Usher – a Black, queer writer who’s writing a musical about a Black, queer writer, one who’s writing a musical about a Black, queer writer. It’s “A Strange Loop” that Lee helped launch as a principal player.
“Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning, blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young artist grappling with desires, identity and instincts he both loves and loathes,” it’s described. “Hell-bent on breaking free of his own self-perception, Usher wrestles with the thoughts in his head, brought to life on stage by a hilarious, straight-shooting ensemble.”
Lee originated the role of Thought One, Usher’s supervisor of sexual ambivalence, while featuring as other key constructs of the character’s imagination like a sympathetic theatergoer. She became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Tony Award last year as a result.
The entertainer was up for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical. The award ultimately went to industry veteran Patti LuPone for “Company,” but secured her permanent place in LGBTQ history.
Lee, who transitioned over the course of the show’s three major iterations, now calls the Tony experience her “Debutante Ball.”
“It was a cool way of kind of being introduced to the world,” she says. “It was funny that it took as long as it did, but it was at the perfect time. Had other Broadway dreams worked out over the years, it would have been different. It was almost like I needed to be honest about who I was in order for the gifts I brought to the table to fully make sense to people.”
Watermark spoke with Lee ahead of her final Broadway bow as Thought One. She reflected on entering and exiting “A Strange Loop,” making LGBTQ history and what she hopes comes next.
WATERMARK: What’s it like looking back on Michael R. Jackson’s Facebook message?
L Morgan Lee: To me, the whole process is a testament that the things that are meant for you to have don’t take a lot of crazy hoops and barrels to get to. So I can have an audition that I completely bomb, but then that’s the gig that I get.
I think a lot of that is because the things that are meant for you are meant for you. In the case of “A Strange Loop,” Michael sent me a message saying, “I got your name from a mutual friend and would you be interested in coming in to do this reading of a new project that I’m working on?” I think he saw me singing an arrangement of [Disney’s] “Part of Your World” that I did in a cabaret show and he was interested in me coming in. He sent me some clips of his music to check out.
What were your thoughts?
I was immediately drawn to how raw his voice was as a writer, how blunt he was. He was saying things that we’re not used to hearing, particularly in musical theater. There was something in my life at that point that made me very interested in what this person’s POV was.
There are people who say “A Strange Loop” is unapologetically Black or unapologetically queer, and I actually don’t think those things. I think that it’s unapologetically Michael R. Jackson. This is a very specific POV from this human and it’s how his mind works and how he’s found ways to express that through his artwork.
How do you describe the show and your roles in it?
The musical is about a fat, Black, gay usher who is grappling with issues of self-hatred and identity. Usher is grappling with these issues and the many different shades of thoughts that run through his mind.
Six of us play the world around this human’s head. We are figments of Usher’s mind. That’s sort of the interesting thing about the piece; every character around Usher is his idea of other people – they might be this way in real life, they might not; it’s all his translation.
What’s your translation of Usher?
Usher feels oppressed and tortured by society’s expectations of Black men – particularly Black, gay men; particularly Black, fat, gay men. Everything that he’s grappling with causes him to spew out these versions of people around him. So to me, as an artist – I direct, so I can’t help but look through that lens – Usher is grappling with a lot of rage.
That really colors the ways that he views the people around him. His relationship with his parents, his family, it’s all coming from a space of love, but also rage. As a result, you see that version of all these people. To me that’s the reason some of them are portrayed as they are, because as a Black woman in the piece it’s particularly complex.
You transitioned during the show. How did you navigate that experience?
I am certainly a completely different human in so many ways than I was when I started the journey with the show. I feel as if I shed my skin through the growth of the show – and because we’ve had the gift of having three different productions, I’ve noticed that each run of the show impacted me differently.
The Broadway run was in many ways the most difficult for me – which I think makes sense, because the more comfortable I’ve become in my own skin, and in my own womanhood, the more distant I’ve felt from the piece. In many ways, the more of a guest I’ve felt like I was in the room compared to when we started.
How so?
Before I was being open about gender and was being assumed male, my journey was not necessarily like Usher’s. I did not have the social issues that Usher had, I was very fruitful in New York City when I sort of started out. Maybe a little too much. (Laughs.)
But I connected to the underbelly of Usher’s journey in that he was questioning people and the expectations of society, because I think that’s something that we all deal with. And with each iteration of the show, we all, in a sense, just got deeper inside the loop. We were getting deeper and deeper into it and as we were doing that, there was a period before we went off-Broadway where I’d started transition and I was like, “this is not a room for me. This is not my story. This is a gay, Black male story and I am not a gay, Black male. I just don’t belong here.”
So I reached out to the team and said, “I respect the piece and I also respect my journey and because of that, I think I need to take a step back and make room for the person who should be in that spot to tell this story. I will be in the audience cheering you all on, I will be there to support you, but I just don’t think this is a room that I’m meant to be in as a storyteller.”
How did they react?
They came back to me pretty quickly. It sort of came down to a conversation about how my presence in the piece helped the reach of the show and helped sort of expand who was being talked about and who is being seen in the story. That’s not something that as an actor you ever expect the team to say, that they want to figure out ways to make sure that you feel affirmed.
Before that the language had pretty much solely been “gay,” and I think that was a sort of turning point and the language started to become “queer.” I identify as queer because it is a sense of other in some way and I don’t necessarily feel like I subscribe to some of the language that has been given to us in terms of sexualities, because I don’t think that they really had been made to be inclusive of me. “Queer” feels like freedom to me, like there’s the space to do what I want to do without question.
Was Thought One always female?
In my mind, she was certainly always a woman. When I first joined the company, I sort of got off on the fact that I could hide inside of it as an opportunity to play a role and not have to answer questions, because the material and music I’ve always been drawn to have mostly been sort of female rep.
It has been confusing for some people, because roles I may have fit, they saw someone who they assumed was male and it was a problem. Whereas in “A Strange Loop,” I could just play Thought One and it was just sort of understood that this group of actors were playing these characters. That was helpful for me at that point in my journey and I think in my instance, there was so much nuance to it because I was actually on a gender journey.
Did anything change in the show?
There were some little features that changed, and it’s been cool to see how the parts divvy themselves up over the years, but Sympathetic Ear was always there. That was always my main feature, which I always call the Carolee Carmello moment.
I got this moment for a quick second of the show to just be this sensible leading lady and then she was gone. That’s a big part of my relationship with the show, actually. In the beginning of the process, getting to have that little Carolee Carmello moment is what held me to the piece in so many ways. I kept coming back, because I was like, I’ll never get to do this kind of thing again. The show allowed me to do what I actually really love doing, even if it was just for a millisecond of time.
What’s it like looking back on your Tony nomination and journey?
Well, number one, I am still kind of gagged that it happened. I think it’s a big deal, on many levels, because Thought One is not trans. Thought One is just a woman, simply a woman, and could be played by anyone comfortable playing a woman.
So I think it was a big deal to me because my Broadway debut was in a role that is not trans-specific, which is one of the things I think that so many of us are fighting for.
I think the Tony situation is cool, because at the end of the day, yes, I was the first. I think that we get caught up in the accomplishment of there being a first, but what we don’t think to do with the people who are the firsts is check in on them to see how they’re doing. Because to be a first means that you probably had to go through a lot of stuff in the dark.
It might be really wonderful to be in a Cinderella moment on a red carpet in a gown made by a designer that you were dreaming about, but I know walking through those spaces, that those Cinderella moments are not without obstacles on the other side of it.
What’s it like to see “A Strange Loop” close on Broadway?
It’s an end of an era. I think, for me personally, it is a very clear statement that things can be lots of things at the same time. A single piece, a single experience, a single moment, we hold multitudes inside of individual things. So a piece can be groundbreaking, beautiful, magical, harmful, dangerous and problematic all at the same time, to different people. I think my personal experience through the ride of this show has been quite a roller coaster.
The more I got in touch with myself as a woman, the more obstacles I had with some of what the piece has been saying or how it was presented on Broadway. And I think there are elements that I would never change, because all those things were what the piece was supposed to be. The layers are endless and at the same time, this is a journey that I am so grateful for, because I got to know myself so much more fully in the process of this. It is a very rare experience to be in a project that you go through the transition process inside of and then get your Broadway debut and a Tony nomination.
Do you expect “A Strange Loop” will tour?
I don’t know. There are lots of rumors, of course, but I just know L Morgan Lee is done. (Laughs.) I do think that there is a world where this show should tour and should be done regionally and all those things. I am personally interested in what different directors will bring to the piece.
I think people need to see it, because however many opinions, questions and thoughts individuals might have about it, it is a voice that is not heard. It is a POV that is not seen or heard nearly enough, so I think that people would benefit from hearing it and seeing it.
I do think that it can save lives, because some of the issues inside of it are very current. It can be very polarizing, so it just needs to fall into the right hands; that’s what’s important.
What’s next for you?
My goal is to move forward in ways that are helpful. I want as much access as I can get, I want to get as far as I can go. I want to be in a TV/film situation, that’s where my heart is wanting to go the most because there’s also more of a platform there. I think it’s important for more people from marginalized groups to have these platforms – because if we want our voices to be heard, we have to have a space to speak from. The mission has always been that I want to be that woman that I knew I needed to see.
As things come to a close with “A Strange Loop,” I am looking towards the light and am really ready to heal and breathe for a few weeks. I’m looking forward to getting to breathe a little bit and then like jumping back in and fully like seeing kind of what’s next.
“What does life look like for Tony nominee?” (Laughs.) That is the next step. People keep using these words like “trailblazer” and all these things. Well, what does that look like? Show me. Give me more opportunities to blaze more trails then. (Laughs.) I want to see that.
Follow L Morgan Lee’s work at LMorganLee.com. Learn more about “A Strange Loop” at StrangeLoopMusical.com and listen to the original Broadway cast recording wherever music is streamed or sold.
