Former Atlanta actress on her Tony nomination: ‘There were a lot of tears’
Christiani Pitts began her acting career at age 5 as a background cow in a Nativity scene at her local Decatur church. She still recalls the epiphany she had as she gazed out into the audience.
“Nobody was looking at me,” she said in a Zoom interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from her home in New York City. “I was the third cow on the left. But I felt like a star! I told my mom afterward that I wanted to be on Disney or Nickelodeon.”
A quarter century later, Pitts is a Broadway star in position to pocket her first Tony Award Sunday at Radio City Music Hall, airing live on CBS and Paramount+ at 8 p.m.
Pitts is nominated as best leading actress in a musical for her role as warily cynical New Yorker Robin Rainey in the two-person musical “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York,” which opened on Broadway last November.
“There were a lot of tears when I found out,” she said.
Pitts each night goes toe to toe with fellow Tony nominee Sam Tutty, who plays the naive and oddly upbeat Brit Dougal. Pitts’ Robin is tasked with picking Dougal up at the airport and delivering a cake to the wedding of Dougal’s father and Robin’s sister. Over a span of 36 hours, the odd couple goes on adventures around New York City while bonding over their complicated back stories.
In her Tony category, she faces off against actresses in musicals with much larger profiles, casts and sets including “Schmigadoon!,” “The Rocky Horror Show,” “Ragtime” and “Titanique.”
“We’re the little show that could,” Pitts said. “The magic of our show is human connection, the intimacy without all the fluff. I love that Broadway is able to do big things, but our show is the opposite. These are just regular people. People who have left the theater tell me the play feels like a warm hug. That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Pitts knows about how Broadway can get caught up in spectacle, having played the female lead in the 2018 production of “King Kong,” which carried one of the priciest budgets in Broadway history, lasted only nine months and failed to turn a profit for its investors.
She spent most of her childhood in Decatur and Atlanta with supportive parents who gave her plenty of opportunities to act, dance and sing. Her father, Byron, is a longtime news broadcaster who currently co-hosts “Nightline,” while her mother, Shea Daniels, co-owns Jake’s Ice Cream in Hapeville.
At North Atlanta High School, she found a mentor in the school’s now late arts teacher Linda Stevenson, who “treated me like a real thespian. She was the best.”
At school, Pitts played Wendy in “Peter Pan” and Aida in “Aida.” During senior year, she said she realized she could make a career out of acting after nabbing a small role in the 2011 Martin Lawrence sequel “Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son,” an early recipient of the burgeoning Georgia film tax credit system.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in music theater at Florida State University, she ventured to Broadway, where she simultaneously was offered a role in the well-established musical “The Lion King” and a supporting role in the musical “A Bronx Tale,” co-directed by Robert De Niro. Her agent told her to go for the original role in “A Bronx Tale” over “The Lion King.”
“I thought ‘Lion King’ would be my dream job but ‘A Bronx Tale’ gave me new material to dig my teeth into, an opportunity to craft a character,” she said. “You can’t do that with ‘Lion King.’ People expect Nala to be the same Nala they have been paying to see since 1997.”
She quickly learned that as a professional actress, she had to see people as famous as De Niro as peers, not icons. “I had to alter my brain chemistry during my audition,” she said. “This isn’t Robert De Niro but a guy who might give me a job. I had to know my worth and do my job. As a cast, we became so close. It taught me theater is a true village.”
Pitts has also gotten small roles in a few TV shows and films in recent years including the 2021 Netflix romcom “Resort to Love” starring Christina Milian and Starz’ “Raising Kanan.”
But the stage is her truly happy place.
“I might be a little bit of a control freak,” she said. “My favorite part of the stage is the amount of control I have. Anything that happens good or bad is my fault. It’s fun to lose yourself in the work.”
Her career has had its ups and downs, she said. She went through a funk while pregnant with her daughter Zora in 2022.
“I battled the lows of being an out-of-work actor,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot from my character Robin. She is in the midst of her own highs and lows. I really relate to her. It’s been very healing playing her eight times a week.”
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
