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As a child, Broadway star Audra McDonald would rehearse Tony Award acceptance speeches in front of her bathroom mirror, she tells Mo Rocca in an interview for CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD to be broadcast today, May 25, 2014 (9:00 AM ET) on the CBS Television Network.
"I used to practice Tony speeches in my bathroom with my hairbrush," McDonald tells Rocca. "I wish I could make that up." The practice paid off. McDonald, now starring as Billie Holiday in the Broadway production of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," has won five of the coveted awards, and was nominated again this year for her portrayal of the pioneering jazz singer. McDonald says she spent a year and a half researching the heroin-addicted and troubled Holiday before portraying her on Broadway. "But eight months ago, once I discovered all of these recordings of her rehearsals of her speaking, where she's been drinking and she's just with her band or her close friends and she really lets loose, her speaking voice is very similar to my grandmother's," McDonald says. "I thought, 'Oh, she sounds like Nana when she speaks. Maybe that's my way in.' And through that, I ended up finding her singing voice."Videos