Interview: André De Shields Is Tartuffe — And He's Feeling Good

André De Shields sure knows how to make an entrance. In Cats: The Jellicle Ball last year, he got a regular standing ovation just for his first appearance as Old Deuteronomy, slowly taking it all in as he made his way across a runway. He’s managed to top it in Molière’s Tartuffe at the House of the Redeemer on the Upper East Side: in the title role, as directed by Keaton Wooden, De Shields enters in dark glasses and a bright red preacher’s robe, singing—what else?—his own interpretation of Nina Simon’s iconic “Feeling Good.”

All in a day’s work for the beloved De Shields, who not only knows how to entrance an audience, but how to give them exactly what they want.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What was your first experience with Tartuffe, in general?
I read it years ago when I was in high school, and I found it dense and incomprehensible, as high school students find a lot of literature. But I always kept close to my vest the need to become an artist who could find ease in that kind of work. You might imagine that growing up in Baltimore and responding to the question of “What do you want to do when you grow up?” with “I want to be Sammy Davis Jr.,” that people took a step back and crossed their eyes. But here I am.

How did you and your director, Keaton Wooden, meet?
Keaton came to me a year ago through one of the investors in Hadestown, and, wasting no time, invited me to lunch at Chez Josephine. So, I’m thinking, “Ah, this man knows the way to my heart.” And he immediately put his cards on the table. He had what he thought, and continues to think, it’s the finest translation of Molière’s Tartuffe, by Ranjit Bolt, and then he caused this Black man to blush by saying “You’re the only person who can take this on.” I had no idea that Keaton Wooden knew who I was. We had a nice lunch and a nice conversation, and he left me with the script.

When you look at a script for a particular role, like in this case, do you look for yourself in it?
I read many scripts. My rule is this. If I think my participation in a project will benefit it, then hardly anything else matters. Money doesn’t matter, contract doesn’t matter. What Keaton put on the plate was, it’s going to be immersive, it’s going to be site-specific. It’s going to be done at the House of the Redeemer. Each side dish that he suggested was more delicious than the last. I said, “Well, I must visit this House of the Redeemer.” And that clinched it.

It’s a stunning space. I didn’t know about it.
I haven’t met anyone in the hundreds of people who have now come through there who had been there before. In this industry, we’re always asking one another, “So, what are you doing?” And when I responded, the next question is “So, what’s the theater?” Every response I had was shocking to people. “What’s the House of the Redeemer?” “What’s on Fifth Avenue and 95th?” It’s out of the Broadway box. Way out of the Broadway box.

You are an actor who is inherently larger-than-life. What is it like to play a room this small and try to have it contain all you?
Well, the answer to your question is in the asking of the question. Part of my gestalt, which won’t surprise you, is that I’m bigger than any character that I have to essay. So, allow me to overfill the room so that people come away from the experience having at the very least understood the literature by seeing it through my attempt. More often than not, when an actor approaches a role, the actor wants to be informed by the character that stands before him. I flipped the script. I want the character to be informed by me. And whether you like the performance or not, I think you might agree that Tartuffe is informed by André De Shields in that performance.

Well, the title is André De Shields Is Tartuffe.
Yes! Let me say this, the ensemble that you witness is the key to the success of this performance. And I’m not being self-deprecating. In order for me to be the clown, you have to have a group of people who can speak the perfect rhyming couplet and who can do exquisite iambic pentameter. And that’s what they do. I can come in in a red clerical robe and dark glasses singing a Nina Simone song and everybody accepts it because the spine has already been created.

That red robe—
It’s the only one of its kind.

Was it made for the show or is it from your own wardrobe?
My own collection. Dede Ayite designed it for a piece I did called Mankind, and when the show was over, because Playwrights Horizons can’t store those costumes, I said to Dede, “May I—” and I didn’t even have to finish the sentence. That was 2017.

How are you feeling about Cats: The Jellicle Ball finally moving to Broadway?
I’m excited the show is moving from off-Broadway—truly off-Broadway. It was a destination. If you wanted to see it, you had to come all the way downtown. And people did that. We got a lot of attention. But there was never any assurance that the show was going to move until very recently. I like the idea of closing 2025 with this romp, Tartuffe, and opening 2026 with Cats. The question that Tartuffe poses can be answered in Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Do you get where I’m coming from?

Go on…
Well, Keaton and I reduced the explanation of Tartuffe to three words—four, because I have to use a preposition: An exorcism of hypocrisy. The result of an exorcism of hypocrisy should be, at the very least, a return to the democratic process of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s on the top of the list at Cats: The Jellicle Ball. So, that’s what I’m saying. Here’s the problem, here’s the solution.