Source: CS / Radio One Digital
Phylicia is known for her breakout role as “Young Celie” in the recent The Color Purple musical adaptation, for which she has received the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Cinema & Television and African American Film Critics’ Association for Best Ensemble and was recently nominated for a Screen Actors’ Guild for Best Ensemble as well as Best Breakout Performance by the NAACP Image Awards.
Before blazing onto the scene in The Color Purple, Phylicia was a performing in The Lion King, in both their touring and Broadway companies, and was a screenwriter for the musical television show Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.
Phylicia was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland right outside DC. Though she is currently living in Los Angeles, she splits time between home in DC and New York for she is an east coast girl at heart. She attended Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, MD and would go on to study musical theatre at Elon University in Elon, NC.
While at university, though she was only cast in 1 out of 24 MainStage shows, she held to the belief that her hardwork, tenacity, perseverance, and commitment to being herself would lead her to greatness. And that paid off when, the week before graduating, she was cast in the national tour of The Lion King.
A big fan of things like Cinderella, the musical Wicked, and the Harry Potter series, Phylicia believes that magic is real, it just lives inside each of us and that is what she hopes to impart to people, especially young girls and women everywhere – that with a little faith and the magic that makes us each special, our dreams can come true. And until then, we should all act like we are the stars of our own life.
