Leslie Odom Jr. Raises a Glass to Billie Holiday and New York City
Leslie Odom Jr. met Josh Gad when they were drama students at Carnegie Mellon. And when Gad calls, usually about some weirdly wonderful little project, Odom tends to pick up the phone. “I always know that it’s going to be a delightful experience,” Odom said, “because it’s no secret: Josh is a delightful dude.”The admiration is apparently mutual. In “Central Park,” a new animated musical series on Apple TV Plus, Odom is the voice of Owen Tillerman, the park’s devoted manager, battling forces intent on destroying his beloved oasis. It’s a role that Gad, one of the show’s creators and stars, wrote with Odom in mind.“Central Park” also shows a softer side of Odom, most famous for his Tony-winning portrayal of Aaron Burr in the Broadway juggernaut “Hamilton.” (Disney Plus will stream a movie version beginning July 3.)Late last year, Odom released “Mr,” his first album of original material, and in early March set out on his Stronger Magic Tour. But the pandemic soon forced him back to Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, the actress Nicolette Robinson (“Waitress”), and their 3-year-old daughter, Lucille. On a phone call, Odom elaborated on the 10 quarantine essentials that have kept him going. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.1. Billie Holiday at Carnegie HallI haven’t been home for this long a stretch since my kid has been born. I’ve never had the pleasure of putting my daughter to bed every single night. Bath time is part of the wind down for bedtime for her, and I’ve taken that as a time to help lay a really good musical foundation. One of my dad’s favorite games was that he would have his music on, and he would quiz me: Who’s this? Who’s that? And it gave me great pleasure to get the answer right. Lucille can recognize Billie’s voice now. When I ask her, “Who’s that?,” she says, “Billie Holiday.”2. “The Sopranos”I’m in the prequel David Chase wrote that deals with a pivotal summer in young Tony’s life. That audition came up fast, so I watched a couple of episodes just to learn what I could. Then I thought I would watch all six seasons. Chase writes about family and brutality and violence and criminality, but I’ve never seen it handled with quite the same economy or eloquence. There’s so much poetry in the series, all the dream stuff, plus the whole notion that a guy like Tony is putting himself on the proverbial couch. Watching someone do the hard work on themselves leads to powerful change, because it inspires someone else to do the same thing.3. Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”After I saw “The Pieces I Am,” the Toni Morrison documentary, I was like, it would be worth my time to complete my education. I’d read “The Bluest Eye,” “Song of Solomon” and maybe one other book. So at the top of quarantine, I picked “Beloved.” Sometimes it’s hard to carve out the time to sit and peacefully read with a toddler, so books on tape have been great — that one in particular, because Ms. Morrison reads it herself. I’ve had a very fun time toggling back and forth between the book and the audiobook, to have her tell the story to me. I think I know something; I know what it meant to me. And then I’ll hear her read the same phrase and it opens it up in a whole different way.4. HypeMiCWe are recording “Central Park” in quarantine. They sent us any equipment that we didn’t have so that we could keep the work going. So I’ve been recording from home. Between that and the concerts, the benefits and the fund-raisers that we’re doing online, the HypeMiC has become my favorite little mic. It sounds great.5. Words With FriendsWith all the free time, it’s been a great source of time suckage, but also of strategy and staying nimble and keeping the brain moving a little bit. I’m very, very focused right now on the six-letter word. That’s all I care about.6. Orange ChickenI like to eat good food, which means in quarantine you have got to cook good food. My in-laws, who live about five blocks away, have an orange tree, and I found a great recipe where you essentially just make a reduction from the oranges. Orange, ginger, soy sauce are the main ingredients, chicken and rice or noodles. I’ve been able to do a vegetable lo mein, a fried rice with it, and I get my Asian food fix. So orange chicken is my go-to meal, and it’s a big hit over here with the ladies.7. “Middleditch & Schwartz”I have heard about the legendary live improv show that Tom and Ben perform for years. It has always sold out too fast for me to witness in person. Enter Netflix, doing essential work in these dark times, by giving us all the literal best seat in the house — it’s the sofa for us in L.A. — for three of these longform improvised shows. Biggest laughs we’ve had in quarantine.8. Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” and Trey Edward Shults’s “Waves”They’re obviously both tremendous achievements in filmmaking. They both deal with class. They’re both about the messiness and the strength of family. And both of the movies packed a genuine surprise for me. I’m not unlike my kid in that way. She loves an adventure, or even a story about an adventure. And she wants to be dropped off in an entirely different place than we picked her up. Both those movies managed to be that.9. ManhattansNic has gotten so great at making this one very specific cocktail, so we treat ourselves a couple of times a week. The other thing is, we only ever lived in Manhattan when we were on the East Coast, within walking distance to the theaters. The city is on our mind all the time. So it’s also been a part of a rumination or a little prayer in some way, raising a glass to one of our favorite places on the planet, pouring one out for our city.10. Cori Doerrfeld’s “The Rabbit Listened”Putting Lucille down each night before we say our prayers — that’s a holy time. We take it very seriously as a spiritual practice for our family. And “The Rabbit Listened” is a book that she requests quite often, or that Nicolette requests because she likes it so much. It’s a sweet little book about when something sad happens, how Taylor, the little boy at the center, doesn’t really know where to turn. These animals show up and they each have a different suggestion about what he should do — whether it’s scream, cry, get even. And the rabbit is the only one of his friends that shows up to listen, so Taylor is able to tell him how he feels. I love the lesson of it. More
