Age: 44
female
Jennifer Kate Hudson (born September 12, 1981), also known by her nickname J.Hud, is an American singer, actress, and talk show host. Hudson rose to fame in 2004 as a finalist on the third season of American Idol, placing seventh. She made her film debut as Effie White in the musical Dreamgirls (2006), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the youngest African-American to win in a competitive acting category. After signing to Arista Records, Hudson released her self-titled debut studio album in 2008, which was certified Gold in the US and the UK, and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. Hudson's subsequent studio albums, I Remember Me (2011) and JHUD (2014), both charted within the top ten of the Billboard 200, with the former also being certified Gold in the US. Meanwhile, her other acting roles include the films Sex and the City (2008), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Winnie Mandela (2011), Black Nativity (2013), Sing (2016), Cats (2019) and Respect (2021), the television shows Smash (2012), Empire (2015) and Confirmation (2016), and her Broadway debut with the musical The Color Purple. Hudson also contributed as a coach on the UK and the US version of The Voice from 2017 up to 2019, becoming the first female coach to win the former.
If Anaïs Mitchell's folk musical had instead begun as a movie musical in the late 90s---primarily because I kept coming back to Andráe Crouch as Yertle the Turtle when I thought of Hades--where Orpheus and Eurydice came of age in the Harlem Renaissance. I imagine the world of the living as a vibrant, thriving underground jazz club in Harlem, where a musician like Orpheus could be looking for a break, with Eurydice being more from a Hooverville, suffering from the turmoil of The Great Depression and hoping to find kinder, more generous souls among the creatives. I see Perspeohone running a gorgeous Art Deco speakeasy in both worlds, and Hadestown reflecting the Rust Belt future of automobile cities. Everything in Hadestown looks like Depression-era Detroit, but with 50 years' coating of coal dust and crude oil. (Everything outside of Hades's plush, old men's club vibe office, that is.) His office is located skybox style over Hadestown, where he often watches the workers as a factory manager might, from behind a clean, safe wall of windows.
