Rising to prominence with roles in Hustle & Flow, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Hidden Figures, Taraji P. Henson has garnered numerous awards, including a Golden Globe for her role in the TV series Empire where she played the iconic character, Cookie Lyon. She most recently showed off her musical chops as Shug Avery in the musical remake of The Color Purple.
More: Taraji P. Henson unleashes her inner theater kid
For her Treat, Henson reveals that seeing The Wiz on Broadway as a child ignited a passion for performing. As an only child, her vivid imagination served her well as a budding young actress. In her later years as a teacher at a summer camp for at-risk youth, she helped foster that same imagination and creativity.
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
My aunt and my godmother, who, when my mother couldn't afford to put me in extracurricular activities, noticed that I was a special child [and] enrolled me at the Kennedy Center. They had this acting program for the youth and so I did the program there and that's when I started to, you know, really get into this. The acting started getting into my body. Then they took me to see The Wiz on Broadway. I don't think I blinked the entire time.
I was like, 'That is what I want to do'. And for me, yes, it was the stage — the grandness, the beauty, the spectacle, the lights, and all of that. But it was [more so] the emotion that was in the audience. I was like, ‘I want to make people feel like that. I want to make little girls and little boys feel this feeling that I have.’ That's where it took off. And all those little moments … Maybe that's why I was the class clown, because I was chasing that feeling.
The Wiz Original Broadway Trailer
Because I was an only child, I was very creative in my imagining. I had to [be] because I was playing alone. My father said as young as two and four, he'd be watching the game — my parents split when I was really young — and whenever I would have to go with him, I didn't have all my toys there so I had to go to imagining. He said he'd be watching the game and I would make him get on all fours and he didn't know [why] he's just doing what I asked him to do. He's watching the game and all of a sudden I'm washing dishes and frying, I have no dishes or anything. All of this is my imagination and my dad's back.
The Wiz - Ease On Down The Road
I did a summer program where I taught acting to at-risk youth and I remember we didn't have [any] money for costumes so I went to Howard University, to Reggie Ray, may he rest in peace, who [was] head of the costume department. I was like ‘Where's your scrap material?’ They gave me two trash bags of scrap material. These babies, they just wanted it to feel like a real play was happening, and I stitched little stuff together and I took these sheets and I cut them and I stitched them together. We did Noah’s ark, so [we really made it feel like] the storm was coming. I had those babies because of what I saw when I witnessed The Wiz all those years ago. That stuck with me.