One small (glass-slippered) step for Cinderella, one giant leap for Broadway.
Former Nickelodeon star Keke Palmer has been cast as the rags-to-riches princess in “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” making her the first black actress to ever play the role on a Broadway stage.
This isn’t the first time Palmer, 20, is making history– she is also the youngest host to have her own talk show, “Just Keke,” on BET.
It’s not the first time recently that Broadway has taken a turn towards color-blind casting, either, with “The Phantom of the Opera” hiring its first black lead, Norm Lewis, and Condola Rashad playing the Juliet to Orlando Bloom’s Romeo, among others.
But it’s a small screen production that Palmer credits for her opportunity, the 1997 TV movie version of the tale with Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg.
“I feel like the reason I’m able to do this is definitely because Brandy did it,” she told the Associated Press.
