Hey, what's up? It's Gustavo Ariano. And today on The Times, our sister podcast, The Envelope, goes behind the scenes with Ariana DeBose. She's one of the nominees for Best Supporting Actress in the Oscars this year. Here's host Mark Olson.

For her fresh and distinctive take on Anita in Stephen Spielberg's adaptation of West Side Story,

Ariana has made history as the first Afro-Latina and openly queer woman of color to be nominated for an acting Oscar.

You want to know where my home is? It's what I pay rent. Right here. What I work my fingers, raw, mending pants, and hemming neckties, so that I can earn enough money to pay other girls to sew for me, so that someday I can rent a shop of my own.

And this great big, beautiful, Nueva, York.

You may have known Ariana already as The Bullet in the original production of Hamilton or Disco Donna in Summer, the Donna Summer Musical.

And though she didn't originally see herself in West Side Story, and she'll say it took some convincing to get her to audition, she now sees it as a role she was destined to play.

My earliest memories are watching the film

in my grandmother's living room,

and I was enamored with the woman in the purple dress.

Now, it wasn't until my adulthood

that I even began to understand the story and what she was dancing about or what

she was speaking about or just in general what was happening in the film. And then it took even longer

for me to realize, oh, it was a stage musical before, which I think is fascinating considering

I'm a Broadway baby, quote unquote. But when I finally moved to New York,

I was 18 years old. And West Side Story very much became a part of my education. You know, I trained

with many professionals, dancers, mentors who are steeped in West Side Legacy, steeped in the Jerome

Robbins' choreography. So I became fairly well acquainted with it. With the great existence of

Chita Rivera, I found her incredibly inspiring, still due to this day. So you couple that with the

knowledge and my love for Rita Moreno from a young age.

And it's, you know, while I won't say that I am a West Side Story devotee, I am an ardent admirer of these women.

And I found them incredibly inspiring.

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