It’s a beautiful, bright, crisp, winter day in New York City and Ariana DeBose is busy working, having only arrived in the Big Apple the day before from Tennessee, where she’s midway through production on another project.

She’s in the back of a chauffeur-driven car when we speak, the early morning sunshine radiating through the windows and onto her glowing face. “It’s so pretty here,” she muses, staring at the glistening, sky-high buildings that are all lit-up for Christmas. “I just love New York [during] the holidays.”

DeBose is looking forward to the holiday season for some much-needed rest as she nears the end of a nonstop two-year work period. She’s moved away from her musical theatre roots and has been busy working across manifold genres on screen, collaborating with a formidable range of actors along the way. We’ll see her in the theater again soon, but until then she’s starring alongside Ke Huy Quan in new action rom-com Love Hurts, and just before Christmas, she will debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Calypso in Kraven the Hunter.

This past fall, she ventured into the horror realm starring as Chef in the creepy thriller House of Spoils. Before that, there was some comedy too, via Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle alongside the likes of Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa. Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s I.S.S. saw her try her hand at sci-fi—and as if all that wasn’t enough, she even found time to work alongside some bonafide Hollywood legends—like Al Pacino in a cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, plus Jamie Lee Curtis and Nicole Kidman in the highly anticipated new television series, Scarpetta.

“I’m actually very proud of myself,” DeBose says through a hundred-watt smile, looking back on all this with wonder. “I’m trying to normalize saying ‘I’m proud of me’—like it’s totally fine to feel that way. I think sometimes women have trouble feeling proud of themselves,” she adds, taking a moment to reflect on her breathless list of projects and impressive work ethic. “It’s definitely been a long two years, but it’s flown by and I’m proud of the diverse projects that I’ve gotten to work on. My goal was always to be a versatile actor in versatile projects, and two years after having a beautiful moment in the sun, I’m really proud to say I’ve done that.”

DeBose’s “beautiful moment in the sun” was her Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. DeBose became the first queer woman of color to win the coveted statuette and was propelled into the spotlight soon after, becoming a household name overnight. Before this, DeBose was known largely for musical theatre and dance on stage, getting her break in 2009 as a contestant on reality television dance show, So You Think You Can Dance. Her Broadway debut followed two years later and roles in Hamilton and A Bronx Tale raised her profile more, while a Tony Award nomination arrived in 2018 for her standout performance in Summer:The Donna Summer Musical. In addition to her work on West Side Story, she continued to make the leap from stage to screen in the Netflix musical comedy The Prom and Apple TV+ series Schmigadoon!.

“I definitely have spent my fair share of time processing, assessing, and just figuring out what reality I live in,” DeBose laughs, saying it took a long time for the Oscar win to sink in. “Today, where I am with it is that I’m so grateful—truly—that the moment happened. I never thought in a million years that would be a moment I would get. I think it’s something you dream about, and you write it on a little manifestation list, and you’re like, ‘Cool, whatever, that’s not really going to happen!’” she cackles. “And then, it does!”

DeBose’s sunny disposition is infectious. She’s witty, gregarious, and chats thoughtfully through a wide smile. She’s dressed casually today in a tee and short winter jacket, with some swish-looking headphones cradled around her neck. She tells fun stories about meeting her heroes from the 2022 awards season, not least Sigourney Weaver who she first spoke to when they were each honored at a ceremony: they got on like a house on fire. She saw her at another ceremony a few months later and on the red carpet, decided to run after her hero. “I got out of my car and started shouting ‘Siggy!’ at her [that’s Sigourney’s nickname] and she turned around and was like, ‘Ari, baby!’ There are just these moments where you’re like, ‘I can’t believe that happened, but I did that,” she laughs. “I felt confident enough to be like, ‘Hey girl!’ to Sigourney Weaver!”

“I look for the joy wherever it exists,” she adds, saying joy is her guiding principle—but so, too, she says, is remaining grounded, no matter where the dizzying heights of fame may take her—or who she might meet along the way. After the Oscar put her front-and-center in Hollywood from a place of relative shadowed anonymity, DeBose says she got straight back to work. Indeed, just a day after her Oscar win, she flew out to start work on her Marvel debut. “[The Oscar win] will always mean something. Always,” she continues. “It will always be, quote unquote, a ‘thing.’”

“But to me, the awards don’t mean anything if I don’t have the work to back it up,” she continues. “I appreciate being recognized, but I also realize the very economic realities of it. I was not a famous person before I won: nobody knew who I was.” She smiles, explaining she needed work to stay afloat while detailing her humble beginnings in North Carolina, where she was raised in a single-parent family by her mother. She decided too, she says, not to make her living solely through dance either, it being her greatest love and something she’d cherished since childhood.

“I came into the entertainment industry predominantly for dancing and I love dance. But I made a commitment long ago that I didn’t want dance to be the skill that I had to make money with because dance is my love language. For me and my relationship to dance, the more I have to rely on that to pay my bills, the more I start to get angry with it, and I don’t ever want to be angry with that. So I really committed to honing my skills as an actor and stand on my own two feet, with just the words.”

DeBose didn’t want to be known solely for musical theatre either, saying that she thought the key to longevity was versatility. “Coming out of [West Side Story], I knew I didn’t want to be known for simply making movie musicals, like I wanted to be known as an actor,” she explains. “I am trying to deliberately diversify the work I do in order to try to introduce myself to different audiences so that I can hopefully continue to be enticing to folks, studios or streamers so that I can continue to work.You think everything is going to be super easy [after winning an Oscar] and it does open the door to more opportunities, but there’s a new journey you have to go on to continue to be competitive in the industry too.”

In an interview with The New York Times last summer, DeBose spoke about the anxiety she felt with the eyes of the world on her after her Oscar win when she was hosting the Tony awards. As a queer woman of color, she told them, “If I go out there and blow it, I don’t know when they’re going to hire a woman of color or a queer person, just because I got it wrong once.” In an industry that’s been painfully slow to cast diversely, DeBose says it’s no surprise she felt like that. “I mean, I still feel that way,” she continues. “I think that’s the type of pressure you feel when you’re a first. Our current White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre—she’s a first as well, and we’ve spoken about what that means and how you carry this with you. I would always put my best foot forward anyways, but I do know in the back of my mind that the example I set is a semi- important one. But I’m keeping the door behind me firmly open and I’m trying to hold it open—and I think some people are finally walking through.”

Away from her day job, DeBose works tirelessly to help more people through those doors. She is a mentor, teaches dance classes to young people, sits on the board of both the AFI and Covenant House International (a charity that works with people who’ve experienced homelessness and trafficking) as well as Broadway Cares/Equity Fight AIDS. Her philanthropic work began when she made her debut on Broadway and participated in her first ever fundraiser.

“I really saw the impact of what just showing up for other people can do,” she continues. While DeBose is heartened the door is opening a little with change more visible on screen, she feels there’s still much work to be done. “I do think there is a hell of a long way to go,” she says. “Denzel Washington says something, which is great: ‘Don’t confuse movement with progress.’ I think that’s true in our industry. I think it is very much more inclusive now...We are more inclusive of portraying breadth of identity, but I think we have a long way to go as far as fully expressing the nuances of our identities.”

“...I remember back in the day growing up as a 90s kid. To be frank, there were so many powerful, wonderful white women playing all sorts of characters—for better or worse. Today, that wouldn’t fly. We have course corrected in many ways, but we still have a long way to go with the nuance and that only comes when we choose to sit down, pay attention, and listen. Studios, production companies, writers—we all have to come to the table and listen differently. This is my opinion, observation—small critique—of the world that I’m living and working in.”

Listening, she says, is something that is much needed in all aspects of our lives, as the talk turns to the recent US elections. On her Instagram, DeBose frequently shared her support for Kamala Harris in the run up to the election; now she is trying to unpack and understand what happened.

“In times like this I get quiet and listen—and I think our election results are a product of the fact that we all need to listen to each other—and listen differently, listen better,” she explains. 

“Being raised in the South specifically, I was raised knowing it’s okay to have differing opinions—we’re entitled to them. It’s how we listen and how we express ourselves that matters...An election result doesn’t change my personal commitment to helping others or helping people who disagree with me—that’s okay too—you’re entitled to that and I want to learn why. I can’t change anybody if they’re racist—like I don’t know what to do for you—but I can pulverize you with kindness and love and maybe that will penetrate a bit. But what we need to do at this moment is listen...and work together.”

She circles back to her own industry. “I wish there was a little more listening here, too—not to respond, but to learn and receive, in order to then take that information and create in what is a truly collaborative space.” DeBose says she’s been deliberately seeking out work that is made in such collaborative spaces, playing characters with the “nuance” she describes—rich characters born out of listening and collaborating with others.

In her upcoming film Love Hurts, her character is front and center in the action genre where women have remained historically absent. “I’ve always said ‘yes’ to roles that I think bring something to the table,” she says. “What I like so much about this film is the way women are very integral to the plot. For a start, there are two female-identifying individuals in the film, Lio Tipton and I, so I was like, ‘Great—there are two of us!’ You see the women in the film in a variety of different colors—with my character Rose, she is vulnerable, she has a past, she’s made some bad decisions, she’s writing some wrongs. She is a force—and I think to have a force, you have to have a well-thought-out [character]. She is a female force embracing the entirety of her personhood."

DeBose says there is nothing at all to be gained from playing it safe—nor from taking critics to heart. “I think if you risk nothing, you gain nothing, so I’m really glad I said yes to all these things,” she explains. “I take notes in real time, and I keep moving, because honestly, the other thing I’ve learned is that there is nothing you can do about the past. It is what it is, people have written about it, it’s on the internet, it’s not going anywhere. I am very focused on what is ahead and charting a new course. I think there are a lot of queer women of color in the industry right now—because there are more of us than there have ever been—who are blazing their own trails. And that will always be so much 

DeBose says her forthcoming appearance alongside acting legend Al Pacino in Shakespeare might be one of her biggest risks yet. “I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything like it,” she smiles, saying audiences may be surprised by Lear Rex, which is based on King Lear. “Our director, Bernard Rose, and Al worked for 10 years to put this together, and I think it will be a Shakespeare piece unlike anything else. And I mean Al’s doing it! Al is a god, he’s an actor’s actor. He’s a wild card, and you just follow his lead. I loved being in that sandbox so much, and every day that I got to go to work I was just so happy to be there. It really was a very special project to me.”

“I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say about it,” she laughs, cautiously, before opening up about her love of Shakespeare. “When I moved to New York, I didn’t go to university for what I do, but I started reading plays and would go see different productions... Watching it I was like, ‘Maybe one day I’ll get to this,’ and here we are. But you know, Jessica Chastain is in our movie too, and she is Juilliard trained—I mean, I’m so not Juilliard trained! I did sort of seek out that job even though I knew it was a long shot for me, and I’m so grateful [they] gave me a chance.”

For now, DeBose says she’s looking forward to taking some time out to reflect on the last few years and figure out what’s next, happy to be heading into the shadows for a time. “Hey, I’m a realist—to be sure people are sick of me so it’s time to give them a break,” she laughs. “I’m very much in a time of re-evaluation and figuring it all out...I don’t read about a lot of celebrities who have taken moments out to say, ‘I don’t know what’s next!’ but I really don’t know! I have some ideas, but I’m just sort of relishing in the unknown and finding my flow again.”

Ariana DeBose says she’s “hopeful” she may head back to the stage, she “wants it to be the right thing.” “I’m working on what’s next,” she concludes, as her car pulls up to the location of her photoshoot. “It takes time. And anything worth doing well will take time,” she smiles, before heading out into the wintry New York sunshine. 

Photographed by César Buitrago

Styled by Ana Tess

Written by Elizabeth Aubrey

Hair: Ursula Stephen at A-Frame Agency

Makeup: Vincent Oquendo at  The Wall Group

Flaunt Film: Juan Pablo Herrera

Stylist Assistants: Jiawen Shang and Jessica Ahialey

Location: Blanc Studios