Before Taye Diggs was following you (and everyone else) on Twitter, the actor had a home on the Great White Way, starring in the original production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Rent.” And while Diggs’ character Benny is featured on some of the show’s most celebrated songs — “La Vie Boheme,” anyone?! — there’s one tune in particular the “Murder In The First” star wishes his character sang. “My favorite is probably ‘I’ll Cover You,'” he told HuffPost Live in a Tuesday conversation. “Jonathan Larson [the show’s lyricist and creator], he outdid himself on that one. That’s the one where I wish I had a higher voice so I could really just dig at it.” Diggs first joined …
Before Taye Diggs was following you (and everyone else) on Twitter, the actor had a home on the Great White Way, starring in the original production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Rent.” And while Diggs’ character Benny is featured on some of the show’s most celebrated songs — “La Vie Boheme,” anyone?! — there’s one tune in particular the “Murder In The First” star wishes his character sang.
“My favorite is probably ‘I’ll Cover You,'” he told HuffPost Live in a Tuesday conversation. “Jonathan Larson [the show’s lyricist and creator], he outdid himself on that one. That’s the one where I wish I had a higher voice so I could really just dig at it.”
Diggs first joined the show in 1996 because he “needed a job.” With limited prior knowledge of musicals, the star couldn’t tell if the production was “good or bad” — he just “knew that it was interesting.”
“A lot of us thought it was weird,” he recalled. “It was just a weird show. We were hoping people would dig it because it seemed very different from what was out there. It was very different from anything I’d ever been exposed to.”
With a Tony Award for Best Musical, a film adaptation starring most of the show’s original cast and one of the longest theatrical runs of any show in history, it’s safe to conclude that Diggs’ hopes were fulfilled.
Watch more from Taye Diggs’ conversation with HuffPost Live here.
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