Audra McDonald, the six-time Tony Award winner and icon of the stage, can add another title to her record-holding résumé: queen of the quarantine Zoom screen.
The last two months of the coronavirus pandemic have seen the world change entirely—and for the arts, that’s meant a lockdown on New York theater, with hardly an end in sight. The theater district will remain shuttered until at least Labor Day, but there’s open speculation that the closure might last into 2021, as big-name productions like Frozen begin announcing their permanent closings.
McDonald, however, is keeping busy. From her home in Westchester she’s been raising money for the Actors Fund with Rosie O’Donnell and singing Stephen Sondheim with pals Christine Baranski and Meryl Streep to benefit ASTEP. She’s doing it again Monday night as host of A Night of Covenant House Stars, a Broadway on Demand benefit concert for the international charity that provides housing, food, and health care to children and youth facing homelessness. A Covenant House board member for years, McDonald will be joined virtually by cohost John Dickerson of 60 Minutes and a smattering of guests, including Jon Bon Jovi, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Rachel Brosnahan, Stephen Colbert, Martin Short, and Dolly Parton.
While sheltering in place with her family of six, including husband and fellow Broadway star Will Swenson, McDonald jumped on the phone with Vanity Fair this weekend to chat about everything that’s happening in the world: the Covenant House’s cause, the future of Broadway, reopening the economy, and losing loved ones along the way. (She starred just last year in the late Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.) “I think we will be back and stronger than ever,” she says. “It’s going to be difficult until then, but Broadway is not dead.”
Vanity Fair: How did your relationship with the Covenant House first come about, and why has this cause been especially close to your heart?
Audra McDonald: It came about six years ago now. I was looking for a place to make a donation for opening night of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. I thought about the Covenant House because, thinking about Billie Holiday’s life, she was homeless for a lot of it as a child, and she was sexually trafficked and the victim of domestic violence as well. So I was thinking, if she’d had a place like Covenant House, maybe she could’ve had some mentorship and some love at an earlier age.
And so I went down there in between shows during previews to make a donation, but I went on a weekend, and they didn’t have anybody there who could take the donation. They had the regular staff, but they didn’t have anybody who had the authority to take money. So they were calling around to see if they could find someone who could take the check. These two security guards were being silly and fun with me as we were waiting, making jokes and stuff, and then all of a sudden, a kid came off the street, and I just watched them leap into action. It’s like they went from these fun, flirty, silly security guards to Batman and Robin. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And I have been with Covenant House since then. And I was invited about a year later to be on the board.