Malinda Parris chuckled and recalled her childhood days of “getting up on the table and singing” to amuse friends and family. “I was always an entertainer,” she expressed.
The singer and actress has worked professionally in London’s West End for almost thirty years, appearing in several well-known musicals, including Matilda, Mary Poppins, and Romeo and Juliet.
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Parris had just arrived home and was getting situated when she answered the phone for the midweek interview. She had shed her job as a West End actor to assume that of a mother. Parris occasionally excused herself from the conversation to arrange dinner preparations while gently guiding her 15-year-old son, Nick, whose voice could be heard in the background.
Parris was filled with enthusiasm as she spent the entire evening at rehearsals for a project that she stated needed to remain confidential until the formal press announcement, “it’s going to be huge, it’s going to be everything.”
Although Parris mostly performs on stage, she co-starred with a number of other prominent West End actors and actresses in the much-awaited feature film Wicked, where she can be heard delivering a solo line in the opening sequence.
The film, which was directed by John M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights), stars Grammy-winning Ariana Grande and Tony-winning Cynthia Erivo. It tells the story of The Wizard of Oz’s “wicked” and “good” witches and demonstrates how our perceptions of what is good and evil in the classic story are not always accurate.
Parris described Chu as a “visionary” and claimed that collaborating with him provided “the feeling that you were working on something magical.” She claimed that he gave everyone a sense of worth, regardless of their position. “He made everybody feel like they were having their close-up shot—I feel like that’s so important, to not just feel like a spare, [to] realize the value you’re bringing to this project.”
Shortly after relocating from Trinidad to the UK, Parris started his trek down the yellow brick road at the age of twelve. She never really thought about singing as a career, even though she always liked it.
She stated, “I sang in church with my [two] sisters—we used to go to church when we lived in D’Abadie, we went to a church in La Horquetta [but] I didn’t know anything about musical theatre as a career option.” She added, “Coming up as a child, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I could go to drama school.’”
After noticing her talent, Parris’ music instructor from secondary school advised her to try out for the National Youth Music Theatre. They gave her a role in an Edinburgh Fringe Festival Tin Pan Alley musical after she sang a Celine Dion song (though she couldn’t remember which one it was): “I was obsessed with Celine and Whitney.”
“My parents were very open,” she said, adding that she was appreciative of this. It’s possible that Parris’ parents were ahead of their time in granting their 12-year-old daughter permission to travel to Scotland for two weeks to practice a play, “My mum and dad knew who I was…and they let me go.”
Approximately two years after the turn in Tin Pan Alley, Parris, now a teenager, began looking at university alternatives and found herself torn between theater and anything more “practical” marketing. The chance to perform Bugsy Malone with the company came about two years later.
She started searching at dorms after enrolling at Oxford Brookes University’s marketing department, but she never made it. Parris received a message from the Guildford School of Acting’s head of the musical theatre program asking if she would think about trying out for a scholarship to their BA program. Parris performed exceptionally well during the audition thanks to her powerful singing voice, captivating stage presence, and years of professional stage experience.
When she was offered the scholarship, her mother calmly let her make the decision she desired, she said, adding that her parents weren’t the “traditional” Caribbean parents. Parris thanked her vocal instructor at the university, Dr. Palmer, and stated, “I’m very fortunate to have parents who encouraged me down this path.”
After graduating around three years later, Parris received an invitation to play in the touring production of Oklahoma! It brought her to Cardiff, Dublin, and the Peacock Theatre on the West End. “I left drama school…and I’ve worked since. I’ve been very fortunate,” she noted. “I was just a little girl who wanted to sing.”
As Nick’s bedtime approached, he and Parris said goodbye, and she revealed that he, too, is a performer, having started much earlier than she had. “He’s definitely followed in my footsteps.”
Following Parris’s performance as Mrs. Phelps in Matilda, Nick tried out for and was cast as Bruce Bogtrotter, the avaricious youngster who eats the entire cake of Miss Trunchbull after stealing a piece, a part he portrayed for almost a year. He also appeared alongside A$AP Rocky in a Klarna commercial. According to Parris, it was her first time traveling abroad for business. “I didn’t even know who A$AP Rocky was at the time!”
Her term for Nick’s stay in Matilda was a “full-circle moment.”
“Me being in the show, him coming to see me and then me seeing him do the show,” It was something she was proud of, she added.
One of the actresses who has had the good fortune to play parts on foreign stages that have allowed her to use her Trinidadian accent is Parris.
She claimed that developing one’s portrayal of a character from the ground up “is about collaboration” between the director and the performer. She praised Luke Sheppard for his transparency and willingness to give his performers “a freer space.” She collaborated with Sheppard on & Juliet and, more recently, The Little Big Things.
“He’s an incredible director,” she stated. “He works with artists that he trusts to bring something fresh.”
She is now working on a play, and after reading the script, she felt that her character was naturally Trinbagonian. “I read the script and I said, ‘You know what? She’s Trini, she’s Trini to me…that’s what she says to me.”
The intensity Parris infused into her portrayal of Angelique in & Juliet is comparable to this. Following in the footsteps of fellow Trinbagonian actress Melanie La Barrie, who departed the West End production to play the part on Broadway in 2022, Parris gave the assertive, down-to-earth character a boisterous Trinbagonian vigor and unique dialect.
Parris praised La Barrie’s performance for “the level of authenticity,” describing her art as “impactful,” and thanked the actress for providing her with possibilities. She wants to help others in the same way.
In a uniquely Trinidadian accent, Parris talked about her ability to switch between dialects and how she traverses cultures as an actor and someone who has seen the culture firsthand. She talks about the inherent dichotomy she experiences from living in a world that is divided between Trinidadian and British cultures, adding that she naturally picked up both accents because she went to school in both countries.
“I operate in both,” she noted. But there can be an unconscious preference even within this duality.
The actress revealed that she was hospitalized for respiratory issues due to COVID-19 in the early stages of the epidemic. “I was so sick,” she shared. Additionally, just one accent could be heard in her delirium. “I completely reverted to Trini [and] I hadn’t even noticed,” during a medical visit, she mentioned that her agent was the one who later informed her.
For the roles of Mrs. Corry in Mary Poppins and Mrs. Phelps in Matilda, she employed her Trinidadian accent.
Although Parris enjoys bringing Caribbean characters to life on London stages, she cautions against disrespecting the culture by developing characters “that are not caricatures.” Angelique is modeled after Nurse, the personal attendant and confidante of Romeo and Juliet in the original. These qualities still apply to her in & Juliet, but she is a more fully realized character with a life and a love of her own.
A Black woman serving a young girl may easily cross the line into caricature in the wrong hands, but Angelique’s autonomy and importance are prevented by the play’s 21st-century themes and the attention to detail of the director and author.
“It’s about [creating] a character that is a fully-fledged [person], as opposed to a ‘mammy’ character,” Parris noted.
In keeping with La Barrie, Parris felt forced to portray Angelique as Trinidiadian as well, stating that “it felt right.”
“When I think about the women who would be [Angelique] to me, it’s my mum, my aunts, and they are Trini. We come from a very matriarchal society [and] I come from a very matriarchal family. The character…was such a pleasure to play because I played her like all the women I know and love.”
Parris admitted that her identity may be used to her advantage or disadvantage during the casting process because she is at the crossroads of being female, Black, dark-skinned, Caribbean, and plus-sized. She called being othered “frustrating,” but she also admitted that things are getting better and thanked God for her “incredible career.”
She stated that she didn’t initially see actresses who resembled her and that she wished to provide younger performers with the representation she didn’t have. “For them, I want to be that.”
Parris believes that drawing on the heritage of “vivid storytelling,” which is infused with “warmth and joy and honesty,” is essential to her role as a Caribbean performer in British theater.
“We’re so expressive and I feel like that is what I take with me [on stage].” She referenced Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, which she uses in her Instagram bio.
“I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” She added, “When I walk into those rooms.”
Parris noted, “I take the ancestors [with me].”
Parris mentioned that she doesn’t take her long career for granted, “the industry is full of peaks and troughs and you have to learn how to persevere.” He added, “It is my calling to entertain.”
