Phylicia Rashad, in black tights and a loose-fitting black smock, is outside the Virginia Theater on West 52nd Street. She has just been rehearsing her role in “Jelly’s Last Jam.”
She spies two of the show’s dancers, Stephen Cates and Janice Lorraine-Holt, watching her while eating ice cream. “Look at them,” she yells good-naturedly, going over to join them. “Ice cream, yet! How dare you! And not an ounce to show on their bodies!”
They offer some; she declines. Watching her figure, she says. She’s not alone-so is everyone else walking on or driving down the street.
Everyone recognizes her-as well they should. She spent eight years being Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” which ranked highest in the series TV ratings for a good part of those eight years.
Now she’s back to her first love: musicals. And her character in this one is a far cry from Clair. In “Jelly,” she assumes the role of Sweet Anita (originally played by Tony winner Tanya Pinkins), opposite Brian Mitchell, who replaced Gregory Hines. (Ben Vereen is also starring in the show, as the commentator/narrator Chimney Man.)
This time her role is that of a sensuous, provocative singer, whose costumes are a far cry from the sensible clothes of Mrs. Huxtable and whose actions on stage generate plenty of heat.
She’s no stranger to musicals. A few years back, on hiatus from TV, she stepped into the leading role in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.” And she has been in “Dreamgirls,” “The Wiz” and “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death.”
“Plenty of off-Broadway, too,” she says. “I’ve played in places hardly anyone but the actors could find when I first came to New York.”
Texas-born Rashad came to New York after graduating from Howard University, though during one summer session she spent “exactly 50 days here, working at the Negro Ensemble Company downtown, rehearsing plays I would perform for exactly three successive weekends.”
It was enough to send her back to Howard (where her dentist father also had graduated; her mother, Vivian Ayres, is a prize-winning poet and author), and brought enough good memories to take her back to New York-followed not too long after by her sister, director/dancer Debbie Allen.
“The first job I got out of college was with a traveling show. We played `Y’s’, such like that. Then I met Vinnette Carroll, who was doing a lot of things here at that time, and she took me on to work with her.
“I remember that time well,” Rashad says. “I was living at the `Y,’ and thinking all the time to myself that this wasn’t a fit place for a college graduate.
“But then I was cast in a bus-and-truck tour of `To Be Young, Gifted and Black,’ came back and worked at the New Federal Theater.” She was in “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death,” but left it to have her son, Billy, now a college freshman.
She has worked as a singer and dancer in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, performed on Nell Carter, Bob Hope and Alvin Ailey TV specials, done TV movies (“Jailbirds,” “False Witness,” “Polly Coming Home”) and more.
Recently, after a trip to India as part of an outfit called Prasad, in which she’s on the board (it’s a charitable project to help people in disadvantaged countries become more self-reliant), she has been spending time with her family-husband Ahmad Rashad, the sports commentator and reporter, and their 6-year-old, Phyleia.
Phylicia, incidentally, had probably the most public proposal in history. It was Thanksgiving Day 1985. Ahmad, a former star football player, was doing pregame commentary on the Jets-Lions game. Phylicia was on camera at the Macy Thanksgiving Day parade. Ahmad told Bob Costas to pop the question; Costas did, and Phylicia came up to the studio at halftime and gave her answer. It was yes.
Talking of it now, she still laughs.
“Oooh, oooh, oooh,” she says. “My mother was so funny! She called me on the telephone. `So much excitement,’ she screamed at me. `I think I’ve ruined the turkey!’
“Needless to say, she hadn’t. She never does. She does everything right.”
