Taye Diggs Can’t Resist a Good Rom-Com

Taye Diggs got his big break when he played the landlord Benny in the original Broadway cast of “Rent,” back in 1996, and he credits the stage for creating, as he put it, “who I am and why I am who I am.” Problem is, live performance had been taking a back seat in his life.

“Once one is lucky enough to cross over to film and TV, it’s easy to get kind of stuck and become an audience member when it comes to theater, and then fear starts to set in,” Diggs said. “I found myself in the audience wondering how these actors onstage memorized all their lines. That’s when I started to get scared.”

Not scared enough to turn down the opportunity to step into “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” though — Diggs is currently in rehearsals for the show, in which he’ll play the scheming, wealthy Duke of Monroth starting Tuesday and through Sept. 28.

Diggs’s presence on New York stages has been sporadic in the decades since “Rent.” One reason is that he has been living in Los Angeles; the other is why he’s in California.

His screen career took off a couple of years after “Rent,” when he helped Angela Bassett track down her mojo in his film debut, “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.” This led to lead roles in the beloved rom-coms “Brown Sugar” and “The Best Man.” Diggs has also been a steady presence on television, with lengthy runs on “Private Practice” and “All American.”

But now he’s putting his summer to good use by returning to Broadway, his first appearance there since a stint in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” in 2015. It helped that he’s a fan of “Moulin Rouge,” having seen the show, he said, about 10 times. And the Duke is a juicy character.