Tony Award winner Lamar Richardson makes theater history

LAMAR RICHARDSON

Lamar Richardson, who grew up in Mint Hill, earned the Tony Award as producer of "Ragtime" as Best Revival of a Musical. Richardson, 33, an Independence High School alumnus, is the youngest Black producer to win the award.

Lamar Richardson’s bet on himself earned him another slice of theater history.

Richardson, an Independence High School alumnus, is the youngest Black lead producer to earn a Tony Award in a top production category when “Ragtime” took the prize last month for Best Revival of a Musical. Richardson, 33, is two years younger than Ken Harper, who won a Tony as producer of “The Wiz” in 1975.

Before “Ragtime,” Richardson already owned a pair of Tonys as co-producer of “Merrily We Roll Along” as Best Revival of a Musical and “Appropriate” as Best Revival of a Play.

In an interview with The Post, Richardson discussed his road to success, formative years in North Carolina and how collaboration paved the way to advancing his rise. Responses are edited for brevity and clarity.

CP: Three Tonys, you’re 33 years old, that’s one for every 11 years that you’ve been around, including the most recent win for “Ragtime,” which was named the best revival of a musical – that’s the one that puts you in historic company. Has it sunk in yet?

LR: Truthfully, no. I’m just so used to always being laser focused with my blinders on and just moving forward and hustling and grinding, so I’m trying to give myself the permission to take space and to really process everything, but it’s really been a work in progress for sure.

CP: You took all kinds of gigs in New York to support yourself to give yourself enough runway to make an impact in the performing arts. You drove rideshares, you played bar mitzvahs, all this other stuff. 

LR: This has been a 12-year journey. I went to Columbia for undergrad, and there was a pivotal moment in my career where I was going into my junior year, and I had just completed internships at MetLife, my sophomore summer, and I was going into an internship at Barclays Investment Bank for my junior summer. I had just did a boot camp, I was awarded a $10,000 scholarship, housing stipend, and this internship, and I just decided I want to take a stand on myself, and I shut down and literally denied that internship, and spent that summer survival job working as a cater waiter, doing off, off, off, off, off Broadway, doing films, background work, and that kind of kick started this whole thing, and from that moment, 12 years ago, there’s been tons of jobs. 

I’ve driven for Uber and Lyft. I was a bar mitzvah dancer, which is basically like a hype man, you know? You interact with the kids and with their families to really make the party fun. I was a host at a steak house in Beverly Hills, and I'll never forget there was a moment where, you know, I was running bread up and down the three stories, essentially, and my manager pulled me aside and said, "You didn’t go to Columbia University to be running bread in this restaurant,” but I never thought of it that way. It was always just a means to an end, and really just hustling and taking a sacrifice and taking a chance on myself. 

CP: Talk a little bit about your Charlotte time. You graduated Independence High School.

LR: I was at Independence, and I left Independence after my sophomore year to go to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham for my junior and senior year. I’m originally from New Jersey, and we moved to Charlotte when I was in the middle of fifth grade in 2003, so depending on who I’m talking to, I’ll say I’m from Charlotte, because Charlotte was literally a part of my formative years of growing up. I grew up in the Mint Hill area. My family is still there to this day, and you know, I went to Northeast Middle School on Lawyers Road. I went to Independence. I was in the Academy of International Studies for two years before I left to go to science and math. 

Charlotte was just such a co culturally rich experience in terms of exposing me to different cultures and communities, and really giving me the framework and the wonderful school system out there to really challenge myself both academically, while also feeling empowered enough to believe that as the son of immigrants and as a first-generation Caribbean American … I was always encouraged and lifted up by all of my teachers and my colleagues. I always look back on that time really, really fondly, because I don’t think I’d be where I am today had I not had such a strong support system in my early days.

CP: You mentioned that you started off on the path to acting as an actor and a performer. When did you make the pivot, and when did you know that the pivot was where you needed to be?

LR: Susan Batson, who’s a world-renowned acting coach, actress, producer, director, and so many other things, gave me my start in this business. Right after school I was working as her assistant at her studio and training with her, and taking classes, and I met Felicia Rashad through her studio. I’ll never forget, on my birthday in 2015 we did a reading together for a screenplay, and I was starring in it, and she was starring in it, and basically from that moment she saw what she needed to see in me to then offer me the role of Sylvester in her production of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” that was going to happen in the Mark Taper Forum in LA in 2016 and that was my first major job as an actor, starring alongside Lilias White, Keith David, Glenn Turman, Nigel Okoro, Jason Durden, and Damon Gupton, and then from there I had pretty much a six-year journey as just an actor working.

I did “New Amsterdam,” “FBI,” “Blue Bloods,” lots of TV. Did theater, did film, and then COVID happened. COVID shut down the industry, and that was a real a-ha moment where I saw this is scary, like there can literally be no work, and it was at that moment I said, “OK, what else can I do in the industry aside from being an actor to be able to have longevity, should this happen again? I knew I wasn’t a writer or a director, and my wife had always said look into producing, and other people had mentioned it as well. 

I was extremely resistant at first, but then I went back to Columbia and did a fellowship, the Front Row Productions Fellowship, through Stephen Byrd and Aliyah Jonas Harvey, who are prolific Black producers as well, and they had this fellowship as a way to usher in the newer generation, so I did that program alongside the Columbia MFA program in theater management and producing that was in 2022. My first show [was] Wendell Pierce’s “Death of a Salesman,” that was my first show as a co-producer in 2022 and from that point to now I've done 10 productions on Broadway. “Ragtime” was my first as a lead producer, and it's just kind of been … a grind and a hustle, and really just opportunity meeting the moment, and we’re just rising to the occasion.

CP: “Ragtime” was your solo producership. Talk about winning Tonys as a collaborator versus getting it on your own.

LR: As a co-producer, you’re a part of a team that helps to finance a production to support the lead producer's lead producer's vision. And my first two Tonys were for “Merrily, We Roll Along” as a co-producer, and for “Appropriate” as a co-producer, and now to step into this lead producer position alongside my colleagues Tom Kirdahy, who gave me this opportunity, Bob Greenblatt and Kevin Ryan, in partnership with Lincoln Center Theater.

This whole thing has just been just truly a blessing. It’s the most wonderful team of creatives, of collaborators, and this cast, and this material is iconic. 

It’s history meeting craft, meeting collaboration, meeting prestige, and to have this be my first foray as a lead producer, it’s overwhelming in a way, because it’s just like we always joke that the bar is just set so high now. Where do I go from here?

CP: Will you ever go back to acting, or is producing the lane to stick with?

LR: I still audition. I had a live audition yesterday. I’m no one-trick pony. I’m open to all of it, and I believe that I’m a vessel, and whether I’m a vessel through me being the person telling the story myself or me being the champion ushering in someone else’s story and hiring friends and creatives and artists that I believe in, I receive and welcome both. 

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