Alicia Keys on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’s’ 13 Tony Nominations and Bringing the Musical to Broadway

Caitlin Huston
·7 min read
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Alicia Keys was doing a meditation Tuesday morning to try to stay calm amid some nerves ahead of the Tony nominations announcement.

After finishing the meditation, Keys said she received a call, alerting her to the fact that Hell’s Kitchen, the semi-autobiographical musical for which she wrote the score and arranged the music, had been nominated for 13 Tony Awards, including best musical. And that’s when she lost her cool.

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“I kind of lost it, kind of freaked out, and I was super excited, particularly that all of the collaborators on this project are seeing so much love and so much greatness for their brilliance. I’m so excited for everybody and for Hell’s Kitchen. It’s just like, “Whoa!,” Keys said.

Keys has been working on this project for 13 years, with collaborators including book writer Kristoffer Diaz, director Michael Greif and choreographer Camille A Brown, and an Off-Broadway run in the fall. The musical is not exactly the story of her life, but is based on her own upbringing as a young artist in Hell’s Kitchen, as it follows a 17-year-old, played by Maleah Joi Moon (one of the Tony nominees), who learns to embrace music and her community amid a sometimes contentious relationship with her mother (played by Shoshana Bean), who is acting as a single parent. The score includes well-known hits from her catalog, including “Girl on Fire” and “Empire State of Mind,” as well as new songs written for the show, such as “Kaleidoscope.”

She spoke with The Hollywood Reporter immediately after Tony nominations about why she wanted to bring this musical to Broadway and what that process has been like.

In addition to writing the score, you’ve been working with the singers, working on the orchestrations, sitting in on rehearsals and also acting as a producer. Why did you want that level of involvement? 

Creating the story line along with Kris Diaz, our phenomenal book writer, he and I have been together the longest in this process, and so the vision of it has stemmed from that beginning. And so I know what it’s supposed to feel like. I know what it’s supposed to sound like. I know what it’s supposed to look like. I know how the people are supposed to react. I know this piece. I know it intimately. And so that’s why it’s so important that it rings true. I’m so grateful to be surrounded by such unbelievable collaborators who elevate it to all kinds of levels that I could have never even imagined. And so that’s why I’m so crazily involved with all the pieces, because I know it intimately, and so it’s really special to do this with such a great group.

What made you want to do a musical in the first place?

I really felt so drawn to as a storyteller, just creating stories about unique spaces and diverse places that I personally have been a part of or witnessed or grown up within. And this story of this building that I grew up in, called Manhattan Plaza, which is just the only one of its kind in New York City, was just so fascinating to me and this idea of of a 17-year-old girl being raised by a single mother and living in this community in New York City in the 90s and growing up in the darkness and the roughness of the 90s in New York. There was so much to the community there and the people. So much of this is an homage to the people I’ve met along the way and who they are and how they’re so unique and different and how those worlds really create a community.

And so it just felt like it just felt so right to tell this story. And 13 years ago, it was exciting to be able to bring forth unique stories, especially of diversity, that wanted to be told. And so we started that process, and it felt so right. My mother introduced me to theater as a girl. She’s an actor and moved to New York from Toledo, Ohio to pursue her dreams, and so theater has and Broadway has always been a part of my constitution. And so it just all felt like the right progression.

Growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, you must have seen a lot of shows. 

Definitely. That’s kind of the beauty of being able to be so close to such a magical area and being able to be exposed to different styles. One of the things I tell people is I never I’ll never forget the first time I saw Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk. As a kid, I was just so stunned that I could see myself and see like this beautiful energy in this incredible New York, New York vibe mixed with the beauty of tap dance and all these other styles of dance. It was electrifying. And I remember that really made an impact on me on the way that we can combine styles and worlds in art and how important it is and how eye opening that is.

A lot of recognizable songs from your albums are in the show, but have been reorchestrated. “Fallin,” for example, now has a jazzier take on it. What was it like to approach your songs in different way?

Even the orchestrations of adding the horns, the strings, all of these beautiful sonics and fabrics and textures, but at the heart of it, really taking these songs and making them fit, making them be meaningful to the character and the storyline has been such a thrill because the songs and the music really does propel the storyline forward. It’s not just kind of inserted as like a nice thing to listen to. There’s a reason it’s there. And it means something and it takes you farther.

I think to be able to look at it in that way and being able to deconstruct and reconstruct the songs along with my collaborators, Adam Blackstone and Tom Kitt, it really has created another experience of how you can relate to the songs. And for me, as the composer of the songs. I’ve never heard them in this way. And it’s fascinating to me that they can mean something new in that context.

You had a starry Broadway opening with Michelle Obama and others in attendance. Did I read that she gave Shoshana Bean, who plays the mother in the show, a standing ovation mid-show? 

I think it was Oprah! She stood right up, the first person on this unbelievable song that Shoshana Bean sings called “Pawn It All” and she shot up and everybody just shot up behind her, because it was just electrifying. And that was pretty beautiful. And I was so excited for Shoshana. She’s so magical, magnificent, talented beyond belief. And I hope she saw it. I hope she saw it with her own eyes, because I saw it.

Now that your first Broadway musical has opened, what have you learned from this process? 

I’ve learned that the people that you collaborate with are so important and the way that each person brings something special to the process from sound design, set design, costume design, obviously, our magnificent director and the book writer, the stage manager and every single person that’s a part of this moving art installation is so important, and they all hold a piece of the energy that gets transferred to those who come and see it.

And so I feel like what I’ve learned is that the energy around it, the energy around anything that one creates or is a part of is almost 90 percent part of why it resonates in the way that it does. And so I feel like that’s what I’m receiving. And also the love from the theater community. There’s something special about the veterans and us combining this new freshness with the veteran wisdom, that I think has created a very special way to express this.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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