Hi everyone and thank you for tuning into the 282nd episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood Reporters Awards Podcast which is the and is now

now streaming for your Emmy consideration.

I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is currently the toast of Broadway.

He's a versatile young actor who has starred on screens Big Ann Small, but is best known for his work on the stage and is currently nominated for the best actor in a musical Tony for his dual portrayal of Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels in the first ever musical version of Tutsi,

which is playing eight times a week at the Marquis Theater, Santino Fontana.

Over the course of our conversation at the offices of Pulking Company, the PR firm representing Tutsi, the 37-year-old and I discussed the importance of his years as a student in a BFA program that brought together

the University of Minnesota and the Guthrie Theater. the

Guthrey Theater. How he began making his name on Broadway, only to have his career

interrupted and his life jeopardized by an injury that he sustained during a

2010 performance of a view from the bridge.

How he rebounded in 2013 with the parts of two princes, one on Broadway and Cinderella, for which

he received a best actor in a musical Tony nomination, and the other in Frozen,

the Disney animated film that became an international phenomenon, and a couple of years later as the

love interest on the CW show Crazy Ex Girlfriend.

How most recently he wound up wearing a dress in high heels and singing like a woman as the

star of a show now garnering rave reviews, making more than a million dollars a week, and currently nominated for 11

Tony's, plus much more.

So without further ado, let's go to that conversation.

Santino, thank you so much for Juttius.

Great to have you.

We always begin with just a few basics.

Where were you born and raised and what are your folks do for a living?

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