Danielle Brooks Holds Serve

The actor returns to Broadway in The Piano Lesson more self-assured than ever.

- Tirhakah Love

DANIELLE BROOKS IS sitting in a corner of the Glass House Tavern's upper level, brows furrowed, fingers furiously slashing across her phone screen. "Whatchu playin'?" I ask her. "Fruit Ninja, horribly," she says. Her eyes, once focused on dicing digital citrus and berries, now convey a winsome giddiness. Those in the know tell me this tavern is where the cast of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson goes to kick it-to decompress after the latest rehearsal, to clown, talk shit, and bond. But on this early-fall Friday afternoon, the place is buzzing with layfolk, tourists, and theater nerds sipping on midday martinis before jaunting through a Theater District recovering from pandemic woes. And then there is Brooks, dressed down in a burnt-orange hoodie and matching sweats, wearing a dark, fitted cap with a D embroidered in Collins Old English-style font. "What exactly does social media serve?" she asks with an almost familial calm during one of our conversation's many digressions. "It's dumb, entertainment," I suggest. "Well, I'm supposed to be the entertainment!" her voice skies.

Brooks, 33, has been performing for applauding audiences since starting at the age of 6 in her South Carolina church. She snuggled into viewers' hearts as the undermined inmate turned activist leader Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson in Netflix's Orange Is the New Black fresh out of Juilliard nearly a decade ago. While shooting that seven-season banger, she earned a role-and a Tony nomination-as Sofia in the musical The Color Purple (a role she'll reprise in the 2023 film adaptation). James Gunn hand-picked her as co-lead opposite John Cena in HBO Max's superhero comedy Peacemaker, which, by season's end earlier this year, proved to be one of the streamer's most viewed original programs. Oprah swears by her.