Todrick Hall

Hailing from Arlington, Texas, Todrick Hall first gained widespread attention as a semifinalist on the ninth season of American Idol in 2010. Endowed with gifts spanning vocals, performance, choreography, and direction, the entertainer turned that fleeting exposure into a sustained multidisciplinary career. Rather than following the conventional path of talent-show alumni who issue albums or EPs, he chose to fuse his skills through original content on YouTube, launching a continuing sequence of viral clips that paid tribute to admired recording artists. The strategy paid off handsomely: his productions, most prominently the flash-mob sequences created for Ariana Grande and Beyoncé as well as his direction of and appearance in a reimagined The Wizard of Oz, rapidly amassed a global audience, ultimately pushing his channel past two million subscribers.

Additional milestones soon followed, including the lead in a Virgin America safety video for which he also composed the score, a judging position on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, and the starring role in his own MTV reality series, Todrick. December 2013 brought the holiday album Dear Santa, while the summer of 2016 introduced the hour-long visual album Straight Outta Oz; a supporting tour was briefly halted when Hall accepted the part of Lola in Broadway’s Kinky Boots, a role he inhabited for four months before resuming the road itinerary. March 2018 saw the unveiling of the visual LP Forbidden and its accompanying world tour. In May 2019 he disclosed plans for a three-part EP series, inaugurating it with Haus Party, Pt. 1, and simultaneously returned to the Broadway stage for a limited engagement as Ogie Anhorn in Waitress.