TV Special: 2012 Tony Nominees - David Alan Grier on Being Welcomed Back to Broadway in PORGY AND BESS!

Click Here to Play the Video!

BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge was thrilled to sit down and speak with nearly all of this year's Tony Award nominees at the official Tony Brunch on May 2, 2012, and we will be bringing you special coverage on all of them throughout the awards season.  Today we chat with David Alan Grier, nominated for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

David Alan Grier trained in Shakespeare and received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. He has since received two Tony Award nominations and has been named one of Comedy Central's "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time". Grier began his professional career on Broadway as Jackie Robinson in The First, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and won the Theatre World Award. He then joined the cast of Dreamgirls before going on to star opposite Denzel Washington in A Soldier's Play, for which both actors reprised their roles in the film adaptation titled A Soldier's Story. He appeared in Robert Altman's Streamers and won the Golden Lion for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival (1983). Recently was seen in David Mamet's Race on Broadway and received his second Tony Award nomination. Grier's television work is highlighted by a turn as principal cast member on the Emmy Award winning In Living Color (1990-1994) where he helped to create some of the show's most memorable characters. He was a cast member in the series DAG and Life with Bonnie (Image and Golden Satellite nomination); wrote and executive produced a show for Comedy Central called Chocolate News in 2008, and appeared on ABC's Dancing with the Stars in 2009. Grier's first book, BARACK LIKE ME: The Chocolate Covered Truth was published in 2009, and he just wrapped filming the comedy We the Peeples, set for release in 2011.

The Tony Awards will be broadcast in a live three-hour ceremony from the Beacon Theatre, on the CBS television network on Sunday, June 10, 2012. 

Click here for the complete list of nominations! Click here for the nominations by the numbers. 

Video filmed and Edited by Jonathan Frank