Ariana DeBose

Ariana DeBose was eliminated from So You Think You Can Dance in 2009 at just 18 years old. That televised rejection in front of millions of viewers in the United States did not stop her from breaking into the New York stage.

And she did it in a big way.

In 2011, she was part of the original cast of Bring It On: The Musical. Productions followed, including Motown: The Musical and Pippin, where she refined her dance and singing technique before making the leap to the cultural phenomenon of the decade.

In 2015, she came under the direction of Lin-Manuel Miranda for the premiere of Hamilton. There she played The Bullet, an almost invisible but essential role that personified death on stage.

This role demands pinpoint physical precision, since her movements set the rhythm of the gunfights and duels in the play.

The sweat before the statuette

Steven Spielberg chose her in 2019 to play Anita in the version of West Side Story. The production suffered logistical delays due to the global health crisis, and the theatrical release finally took place in 2021.

She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2022, becoming the first Afro-Latina and queer woman to win this award for a performance.

That victory changed her standing with the major studios in Los Angeles.

Her background in musical theater allowed her to handle the physical demands of the role with a natural ease that few expected from a production of that scale. Still, the film's box office was modest compared with the reviews it received.

Between Espionage and Animation

In 2023, she voiced the lead character in Wish, the animated film celebrating Disney's centennial. The following year, she filmed Argylle, a spy thriller directed by Matthew Vaughn that hit theaters in 2024.

She hosted the Tony Awards for three consecutive years, from 2022 to 2024. At the 2023 ceremony, she delivered an improvised opening monologue due to the Hollywood writers' strike, which prevented writers from preparing material for the show.

The industry praised her ability to perform live without a prepared script.

New genres and culinary horror

In 2024, she starred in House of Spoils, a psychological thriller set in the kitchen of a remote restaurant. That same year, she joined the cast of Kraven the Hunter to become part of Sony's Marvel universe.

The production of Kraven the Hunter had an estimated budget of $130 million.