Rashad, Phylicia

▪ 2009

Phylicia Ayers Allen  American actress Phylicia Rashad, the first black woman to win (2004) a Tony Award for best actress (for her role as Lena Younger, the matriarch of a struggling African American family in 1950s Chicago, in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun), made history again on Broadway when Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened with its first all-black cast in March 2008. With costar James Earl Jones, Rashad—in the role of Big Mama—anchored the production, which set Williams's tale of a wealthy Southern planter's morally foundering family at a remove from its original Jim Crow-era time frame to accommodate the African American cast. In February ABC broadcast Rashad's Tony-winning performance, in a television adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. Well received by critics, the adaptation also featured Rashad's costars from the 2004 Broadway production, including Audra McDonald and Sean Combs.

      She was the second of four children born to Andrew Arthur Allen, a dentist, and Vivian Ayers Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet. Phylicia's older brother, Andrew Arthur (“Tex”) Allen, Jr., went on to become a jazz musician, and her sister, Debbie Allen, was a dancer, actress, and television producer and director, notably for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1970 Phylicia graduated from Howard University, Washington, D.C., with a B.F.A. in theatre. Soon thereafter she found work with the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City. She made her first appearance on Broadway in 1972 and had minor roles in the hit musicals The Wiz (1975) and Dreamgirls (1981) before making the transition to television. In 1982 she landed a regular role on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Two years later comedian Bill Cosby chose her for the role of his wife, attorney Clair Huxtable, in the groundbreaking situation comedy The Cosby Show (1984–92). After marrying (1985) sports broadcaster Ahmad Rashad, she began using his name professionally (the couple divorced in 2001). Her role as Clair—graceful but assertive, dignified but devoted—became a defining one for Rashad and earned her two Emmy Award nominations, two People's Choice Awards, and an NAACP Image Award. She also played Cosby's wife in the series Cosby (1996–2000). During the 1990s and early 2000s, Rashad returned to the stage while continuing to work steadily on TV. Her portrayal of the semimythical Aunt Ester in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean (2003) in productions in Los Angeles and on Broadway won enthusiastic praise. Rashad's performance in A Raisin in the Sun also earned a 2004 Drama Desk Award. In 2007 Rashad made her directorial debut at the helm of the Seattle Repertory Theatre's production of Gem of the Ocean, and in 2008 she began working on the film The Middle of Nowhere, in which she had a starring role, scheduled for release in 2009.

Janet Moredock

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