On television, she was seen by millions as the Mother Abbess in NBC’s The Sound of Music Live!, won an Emmy Award® for her role as host of PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, and received Emmy® nominations for Wit, A Raisin in the Sun, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. On film, she has appeared in Seven Servants, The Object of My Affection, Cradle Will Rock, It Runs in the Family, The Best Thief in the World, She Got Problems, Rampart, Ricki and the Flash, Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, the movie-musical Hello Again, Cinergistik’s documentary Whitney Houston in Focus, the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions’ Rustin, and MGM’s Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect. McDonald is a Juilliard-trained soprano and has issued five solo albums on the Nonesuch label. She also maintains a major career as a concert artist, regularly appearing on the great stages of the world and with leading international orchestras. She is a founding member of Black Theatre United, a board member of Covenant House International, and a prominent advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, whose favorite roles are those performed offstage as an activist, wife to actor Will Swenson, and mother.
Seth Rudetsky is the afternoon host on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio’s On Broadway and the host of Seth Speaks on Sirius/XM Stars. As an author, he penned My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan and the sequel The Rise and Fall of a Theater Geek (Random House), as well as three volumes of Seth’s Broadway Diary, featuring inside scoops and hilarious stories from all the stars he’s worked with. He co-wrote and co-starred in Disaster! (The New York Times “critics pick”), which also premiered to rave reviews in London. In June 2016, he and his husband, James Wesley, co-produced a recording of “What the World Needs Now” with stars like Idina Menzel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Carole King, and Audra McDonald. The recording went to #1 on iTunes and raised more than $100,000 for victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Rudetsky and Wesley’s foundation Your Kids Our Kids presented Concert for America—a nationwide series featuring stars like Barry Manilow, Keala Settle, Stephanie Mills, Vanessa Williams, Billy Porter, Randy Rainbow, and Audra McDonald that raised money for five nonprofits. They also present Voices for The Voiceless, a yearly star-studded concert for You Gotta Believe that helps older foster children find families, even if they’ve aged out of the system. SiriusXM/Pandora also carries Rudetsky’s first podcast series, Seth Rudetsky’s Back To School, where he interviews stars about the ups and (hilarious) downs of their high school years. The first two seasons include Tina Fey, Bowen Yang, Allison Janney, Vanessa Willams, and many more. When Broadway shut down, Rudetsky and Wesley started hosting and producing Stars in the House, a twice-daily livestream that has featured many Broadway stars and reunions of television show casts from The West Wing, Scandal, Frasier, and E.R., raising more than $1 million for The Actors Fund. They also joined Marlo Thomas and co-produced new versions of “Free to Be You and Me” with Sara Bareilles and “Sisters and Brothers” with the Broadway Inspirational Voices, donating profits to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Find out more about Rudetsky, and watch his signature “deconstructions,” at SethRudetsky.com.
