NC native Ariana DeBose makes history with Oscar win for ‘West Side Story’

With Sunday night’s Oscar win, North Carolina native Ariana DeBose made history.

DeBose, the triple-threat dancer/singer/actress born in Wilmington and raised in Raleigh and Wake Forest, is the first openly gay woman to win an Academy Award for acting.

She is also the first openly gay woman of color and the first Afro-Latina to win an Oscar for acting.

DeBose won the Best Supporting Actress award during Sunday’s live, televised ceremony in Los Angeles. She won for playing Anita in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story.”

Speaking of history, Rita Moreno won the same award for the same role in the original 1961 “West Side Story,” making her the first Latina actress (and first Puerto Rican actress) to win an Oscar. DeBose’s win makes her the second with each distinction.

It also marks the third time two actors have won an Oscar playing the same part (Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brandon both won playing Don Vito Corleone, and Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix both won playing The Joker).

Kristen Stewart, nominated for Best Actress for “Spencer,” was also in the running to be the first out woman to win an acting Oscar.

DeBose has also won BAFTA (considered the British Oscar), Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice awards this season.

DeBose wore a fiery red Valentino Couture pantsuit to the ceremony. Her mother, Gina DeBose, a teacher at Wakefield Middle School in Raleigh, accompanied her to the Oscars show.

DeBose’s background from Raleigh to Broadway

Before “West Side Story” fame, DeBose was perhaps best known for playing “The Bullet” in the original Broadway cast of “Hamilton” (2015-16), the biggest theater event of more than a decade, and for her Tony-nominated turn as Disco Donna in “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” (2018).

Her Broadway debut, though, came in 2011, in “Bring it On: The Musical.” That was followed by “Motown: The Musical” in 2013 and “Pippin” in 2014. From 2016-17, she played Jane in “A Bronx Tale.”

In addition to her work on stage, DeBose worked alongside Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Kerry Washington in the 2020 Netflix movie, “The Prom,” and with Alan Cumming, Keegan-Michael Key and Kristin Chenoweth in the 2021 Apple TV+ musical comedy series “Schmigadoon.”

She also hosted “Saturday Night Live” in January 2022.

As for her time in Raleigh, DeBose is a graduate of Wake Forest-Rolesville High School, where she performed in productions of “Aida,” “Les Misérables” and “A Chorus Line.”

She studied with Christy Curtis, the founder of CC & Co. Dance Complex in Raleigh, from an early age. In 2009, when she was 18, she competed on Season 6 of the television competition series “So You Think You Can Dance,” placing in the Top 20.

DeBose was The News & Observer’s Tar Heel of the Month in March 2021.

DeBose and Afro-Latina representation in ‘West Side Story’

DeBose is the first Afro-Latina actress to play the role of Anita in “West Side Story.”

With her SAG Award win in February, DeBose became the first Latina performer to win an individual film prize from the Screen Actors Guild.

DeBose’s father is Puerto Rican, and she told Marc Maron in an interview in early March that he has never been part of her life. But the fact that she didn’t grow up with her father, she told Maron, “doesn’t make me less of what I am.”

She told Maron: “When I walk down the street I’m a black woman to half the world, and if you know, I’m a Puerto Rican.”

DeBose told The News & Observer in December 2021 that Anita’s representation was very important to her, and she let director Spielberg know right away.

“It was one of the first things I brought up when I was auditioning,” DeBose said. “I said if you’re not interested in exploring this — this is my lived identity, I am Afro-Latina — then I don’t know that I’m your girl, because I’m a Black woman. I walk through the world as a Black woman. And it’s not every day that Afro-Latina women get to play characters where the audience really gets to know their experience. ... So I was just basically like, if you’re not interested in that perspective I don’t think you should hire me.”

DeBose said that Tony Kushner, who wrote the screenplay, worked on ways to acknowledge that lived experience in the updated story.

“For me, Anita has taught me so much and she’s helped me embrace another facet of who I am and embrace my Hispanic heritage,” she told The N&O.

UNCSA grad Paul Tazewell nominated for Costume Design

Paul Tazewell, a UNC School of the Arts graduate, is nominated this year for Costume Design for his work on “West Side Story” — the first Black man to be nominated in that category.

Tazewell grew up in Akron, Ohio, and has a background designing costumes for Broadway, in shows including “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “In the Heights,” “The Color Purple” and “Hamilton.”

He won a Tony for his work on “Hamilton.”

Durham native the voice of the Oscars

Another local connection to Sunday’s Oscars is the show’s announcer, Durham native and UNC-Chapel Hill graduate Janora McDuffie.

McDuffie is the first African-American woman and the first out voice-over artist to announce for the Academy Awards.

“I feel like, one, it’s an honor,” she told The News & Observer last week.

“It’s a huge honor and not just representing Black women, not just representing the LGBTQ+ community, but representing home. I have such a huge place in my heart for Durham, for Chapel Hill. So I’m thankful for the opportunity to shine.”