NEW YORK (AP) — A 24-year-old triple threat who toured in “Hairspray,” competed on “American Idol” and came to the attention of casting agents with her TikTok videos has landed the plum role of Dorothy in the Broadway-bound production of “The Wiz.”

Nichelle Lewis will star in the national touring show this fall and then make her Broadway debut next year as the show’s heel-clicking heroine, following in the footsteps of such icons as Stephanie Mills and Diana Ross.

“It’s been a pretty crazy journey,” she told The Associated Press before her official unveiling Monday. “I’m honored to be making my debut as Dorothy. I know I’m following in some really big footsteps.”

“The Wiz” tours the U.S. starting this fall in Baltimore and will land on Broadway in 2024. Lewis joins a cast that includes Wayne Brady and Alan Mingo Jr. sharing the role of the Wiz, Deborah Cox as Glinda, Kyle Ramar Freeman as the Lion, Phillip Johnson Richardson as the Tin Man, and Avery Wilson as the Scarecrow.

Lewis, who grew up in Virginia and graduated from Molloy University in 2021, used her modest TikTok account to share her voice — one song was “Home” from “The Wiz” — and it came to the attention of casting agents, who invited her to audition.

“I’m so excited that this is a part of my story, because I feel like there’s so many people out there who started out with such a small following and I feel like they’re hard on themselves about it,” she said. “But I’m like, ‘You never know who’s watching those videos.’ I never knew that ‘The Wiz’ was looking at my videos.”

The show is adapted from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum, with a book by William F. Brown, and music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls.

Lewis says she identifies with Dorothy, who is alone on a journey of self-discovery in a new world while also helping others along the way find out who they are.

“I feel like it’s extremely important for people, especially right now, to see that they can be powerful just by being themselves and just by being individual and unique. So I think that’s how the show speaks to me,” she said.

“The Wiz” opened on Broadway in 1975 and won seven Tonys, including best musical. It has such classic songs as “What Would I Do If I Could Feel” and “Ease On Down the Road.” The original Broadway production featured Mills as Dorothy, Dee Dee Bridgewater as good witch Glinda and Andre De Shields as the Wiz.

A 1978 movie version of “The Wiz” starred Ross, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor as the Wiz. Michael Jackson co-starred as the Scarecrow, with Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man and Ted Ross as the Lion. NBC televised a live version in 2015 with Queen Latifah, Ne-Yo and David Alan Grier.

Lewis’ love of music was encouraged by her father, who died when she was young. At his service, she sang “My Help,” a song he sang when he was a child, and stunned the congregation.

“I don’t know what happened that day, but I guess just I had this voice come out of me that didn’t used to be there, but probably came from the millions of songs that I grew up listening to,” she says. “I felt like it was something that I could share with others and it was something that I noticed made other people happy.”

Lewis won a Golden Ticket on the most recent series of “American Idol” but didn’t progress from the Hollywood round. Now she’s earned another — leading a Broadway show.

Her mother, naturally, has been screaming and crying. “She’s like, ‘Your life is going to change.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. It probably will,’’ she says, laughing. ”I feel so blessed and I’m so glad I get to share it with her.”

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Attorneys for an Atlanta-based venture capital firm being sued over a grant program for Black women vowed Thursday to fight back against the lawsuit, calling it misguided and frivolous.

At a New York news conference, the attorneys also announced that prominent civil rights lawyers, including Ben Crump, would join the defense for the Fearless Fund, which was founded in 2019 by three Black women.

The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, was brought by a nonprofit founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, the man behind the Supreme Court cases that led to the dismantling of race-conscious college admissions programs across the U.S.

The complaint could be a test case, as the battle over considerations on race shifts to the workplace. Last month, thirteen Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to 100 of the biggest U.S. companies arguing that the court ruling on affirmative action could also apply to private entities, like employers.

In its lawsuit, American Alliance For Equal Rights argues the fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards $20,000 to Black women who run businesses, violates a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibiting racial discrimination in contracts. It claims it has members who are being excluded from the program because of their race and said it’s entitled to relief.

The venture capital firm was established to address barriers that exists in venture capital funding for businesses led by women of color. It runs the grant contest four times a year. To be eligible, a business must be at least 51% owned by a Black woman, among other qualifications.

“Today, the playing field is not level — that is beyond dispute,” Alphonso David, a civil rights attorney who serves as president & CEO of The Global Black Economic Forum, said at the news conference. “Those targeting Fearless Fund want to propagate a system that privileges some and shuts out most. They want us to pretend that inequities do not exist. They want us to deny our history.”

Crump said he was grateful to be able to defend the women who run the Fund against “the enemies of equality.”

Blum “thought they would be the easiest ones to pick off. Oh, was he wrong,” Crump said.

Blum said Thursday his organization is still awaiting a formal reply to the lawsuit from the fund’s attorneys.

“So far, all that has been asserted in defense of this racially exclusive and illegal program are meaningless cliches,” he said.

Arian Simone, CEO and co-founder of the Fearless Fund, said the fund has invested in more than 40 businesses over the past four years. She said it has deployed over $26.5 million in investments and awarded hundreds of grants that total more than $3 million. It is backed by J.P. Morgan Chase, Mastercard and other companies.

The prominent law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher will also take part in the defense, along with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Women’s Law Center, which have been enlisted as consultants.

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AP Business Writer Alexandra Olson contributed to this report.

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