Leslie Uggams, a Fan of Both Nat King Cole and Billie Eilish
The veteran singer and actress Leslie Uggams likes to be busy.
“Even when I’m home and I get to relax,” she said in a phone interview from her home in New York, “I have to be doing something — cooking, doing a puzzle — something.”
The 81-year-old has kept busy since she made her debut at age 6 as Ethel Waters’s niece in the 1950s sitcom “Beulah.” The career that followed included an adolescence spent singing and dancing at the Apollo Theater; hosting her own televised variety show in 1969 (Sammy Davis Jr. and Dick Van Dyke were among her guests); winning a lead actress Tony in 1968 for the musical “Hallelujah, Baby!”; and earning an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination for portraying Kizzy in the 1977 mini-series “Roots.”
Keeping ever current, Uggams appeared in the 2023 film “American Fiction,” performed in “Jelly’s Last Jam” at New York City Center last winter, then did a cabaret run at 54 Below.
”After seven decades, I am still going strong,” she said.
Uggams’s latest role, as the Vault official Betty Pearson on the TV series “Fallout,” has attracted a new wave of sci-fi devotees. (“I’m getting a lot of fan mail about Betty.”) And she’s returning as the feisty, foul-mouthed Blind Al in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” opening July 26.
“I am still riding the wave,” Uggams said, while reminiscing about her family, the author of “Roots” and the way the Apollo toughened her up as a performer. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
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Alex Haley, ‘Roots’ Author
He changed my life, not just because of being cast in “Roots.” He gave me and the world an understanding of ancestry and the importance of knowing our true history, not just what’s taught (or not taught) in schools.
