- Roots actor Dorian Harewood’s daughter and his son’s mother-in-law lost their homes in the recent Los Angeles wildfires.
- The Tony-nominated star of Broadway’s The Notebook: The Musical will make his New York City solo concert debut on Feb. 25, with proceeds going to wildfire relief.
- Harewood and his wife Nancy celebrated 46 years of marriage on Valentine’s Day.
Dorian Harewood performed Olympian feats as the title character in the 1984 TV biopic The Jesse Owens Story and fought on the front line in 1987’s Stanley Kubrick-directed war drama Full Metal Jacket. Nothing, though, could prepare the Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor and singer for the real-life tragedy of the recent Los Angeles wildfires.
“It literally is a war zone,” says Harewood, 74, from Los Angeles. “I have never in my life been this close to the reality of a natural disaster as I am now.”
Harewood and his wife’s home in Pasadena survived intact, but their family nearby in Altadena was not spared the devastating impact of the Eaton fire.
“My daughter’s house burned down,” he continues. “My son’s mother-in-law’s house burned down. They both live in Altadena. Our house, even though it wasn’t destroyed, was so close to the burn area that we also had to evacuate. My wife and I are extremely glad that I did get back from New York before it happened, so at least I was with the family. We’re extremely grateful for the fact that no one was hurt. It’s just everything’s gone, literally, gone.”
“What I’m fighting, basically, right now is this kind of surreal existence. I have to concentrate and not get into an almost catatonic state where I don’t know what to do because there’s so much that needs to be done. All of the adjustments, every day, every minute — it hasn’t been normal, and I don’t know when it will be normal.”
The decimation that several generations of Altadena residents have been facing is particularly heartbreaking, given the area’s significance for Black families. “Altadena has a very rich Black history, a legacy of resilience and culture,” says Harewood. “It’s California’s first Black middle-class community. From the early 1900s, Black families made Altadena their home, carving out a space to build their families and thrive. They were escaping the overt racism in the South.”
“This was the place where Black people could dream,” he adds. “It was the first city in California to ban redlining. It opened up home ownership to Black families who’d previously been locked out of the American dream. It allowed people to build wealth and establish a solid foundation for their families.”
Prior to the wildfires, Harewood had announced his first solo show as a singer in New York, “Dorian Harewood: Songs from the Brill Building,” at 54 Below on Feb. 25. He’s donating proceeds from the concert to fire relief and partnering with CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), a global humanitarian organization founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, to help families in Altadena rebuild their homes and assist with everything from financial support to debris removal.
“Music is a powerful medium, and it’s a healing medium,” says Harewood, whose Tony-nominated role in The Notebook: The Musical this past season reactivated his interest in recording and live appearances. “It kickstarted my interest in and focus on my music career. I like acting, but I love music. Music is my first love. Fortunately, the voice is a muscle, and I was able to get my muscle back into shape.”
The Brill Building is known for launching the careers of songwriting teams like Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, plus dynamos like Neil Diamond, Paul Simon and Neil Sedaka. It crystallized a period of classic pop during the late ’50s and early ’60s where successful songwriters, publishers and record companies operated out of one building at Broadway and 49th Street in midtown Manhattan.
The music of Brill Building songwriters has even furnished several hit Broadway musicals over the years, including Smokey Joe’s Café, Leader of the Pack, Jersey Boys, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical. For his 54 Below debut, Harewood will perform Brill Building classics that were popularized by a range of music icons, from Dionne Warwick to The Drifters.
“The Brill Building was a beautifully constructive kind of hit factory,” says Harewood. “It caught on because it was simple, melodic and had good lyrics. The songs stand on their own. Ninety-eight percent of the songs that were written by these terrific writers were performed by young African American talent, singers and groups. The Shirelles’ ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow,’ which was Carole King’s first hit song with her lyricist husband Gerry Goffin, was the first number-one hit by a Black female group.”
“I grew up around this music. I used to do ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ when I was in college. It was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and it was recorded by [former member of The Impressions] Jerry Butler. He did a terrific job on it. I had a great response from it. I’m a bit older now, so I’ve had to bring it down a step or so, but the song itself is such a beautiful song. I love Hal’s lyrics. His lyrics tell a story. They’re almost like prose.”
Harewood worked with David on Brainchild, a 1974 musical the lyricist wrote with composer Michel Legrand. “It was just beautiful music,” he says. “There’s one song that I’ll be doing, not in this show, but in one of my shows, called ‘Let Me Be Your Mirror.’ It was written for my character. It was the big song of the show. The audience loved it. It’s a gorgeous song. In fact, Lena Horne had heard me do it, and she put it on one of her albums [1975’s Lena & Michel]. She liked it so much, and she even mentioned my name.”
Harewood could readily stage a solo show dedicated to another source of iconic hits, Motown Records. Beyond the influence that Motown artists like Stevie Wonder have had on his career, Harewood opened for the Four Tops during their 1989 European tour and in 1992 starred opposite Gladys Knight in the musical Madame Lilly at the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in Dallas.
“She really liked my singing and acting,” he recalls. “She was going to be doing a date at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. This was while we were doing the musical. At the time, the hit song was ‘Beauty and Beast,’ with Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson. She asked me if I wanted to sing it with her. I said, ‘Are you kidding? Yes!’ ”
“Gladys is an alto, and I’m a baritone, so our voices worked in a lower register for that song. I loved her musicality. Fortunately, I was able to sing it at her level, so it was just these two people doing beautiful music together. That duet was just a beautiful song. Our two voices meshed really well. The crowd loved it.” The legendary vocalist was so impressed by Harewood’s talent that she subsequently invited him to open for her in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
Along with his New York solo debut, 2025 marks a special anniversary for Harewood. It’s been 50 years since he made his first film, the 1975 television movie Foster & Laurie, based on the murder of NYPD officers Gregory Philip Foster and Rocco W. Laurie. The role spawned Harewood’s prolific career on screen, most notably as Simon Haley in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, and as a voice-over artist.
He credits Bette Davis with encouraging him to pursue acting after the two worked together in the musical Miss Moffatt in 1974. On his very first audition for a dramatic play, he got the lead opposite Arlene Francis in Don’t Call Back (1975), directed by Len Cariou. The New York Times applauded Harewood’s performance: “Every nuance of the man is perfect.”
“The show opened and closed the same night,” Harewood says with a chuckle. “Producers for Foster & Laurie had been in New York looking for talent, and they saw me in one of the previews of Don’t Call Back. They hired me and pulled me out to California to do my first film. Bette tutored me through the entire process. We’d talk all the time, back and forth, from Los Angeles to her place in New England, but she guided me through that very first project. She said, ‘Trust your instincts, be on time, know your lines, hit your marks. Keep your reality — just bring it down for the camera.’ ”
While Harewood was in Los Angeles filming Foster & Laurie, he won the Theatre World Award for his performance in Don’t Call Back. “Bette actually picked up the award for me,” he says. “The Theatre World Awards still think about that! One of the highlights of their whole existence was Bette Davis coming to pick up an award for Dorian Harewood, some unknown kid.”
Throughout all his professional achievements, including his renaissance onstage last year in The Notebook, Harewood’s family has always been the main priority in his life, especially his marriage to fellow actress Nancy Harewood, with whom he celebrated his 46th wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day.
“The main reason that it’s worked as long as it has is because of our genuine love for each other, number one, and our being able to stay committed to our relationship,” says Harewood, who shares two children with Nancy. “It hasn’t been smooth sailing. I’ve made mistakes. I wouldn’t say she’s made mistakes. We’ve had rough parts, and we’ve gotten past the rough parts. That has made us stronger and more committed to each other.
“It really gets down to commitment to what I consider an unnatural state, which is a monogamous relationship. It takes discipline to do it. The easiest thing is to say we’ll just do whatever we want, whenever we want, but that also leads to problems. There’s so much involved in a monogamous relationship. There’s no one-size-fits-all or one rule. I just look around and we’ve been together for 46 years — actually 51 years if you count the five years we were together before we got married.”
The couple toasted a special part of their 50-year history in 2024 when Harewood was honored with a portrait at Sardi’s, the venerable restaurant that’s doubled as a Broadway institution for more than 100 years. “We met right next door at the St. James Theatre in Two Gentlemen of Verona,” recalls Harewood about his first Broadway musical. During the show’s run, the couple often dined at Sardi’s. “It was a full circle kind of thing. It was just wonderful. She loved that time, and so did I.”
As he continues to prepare for his bow at 54 Below, Harewood remains dedicated to helping his family manage and recover from the aftermath of the wildfires. “I’ve been compartmentalizing my professional life with the realties of my personal life and trying to make sure I get everything done for this show,” he says. “At the same time, there’s no question as to what the priority is right now and that’s to make sure that my daughter and her family, my wife, and my son and his family are gonna be okay. We just put one foot in front of the other and we go ahead.”
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