She played the world’s coolest dance teacher and has had big success as an actor, director and choreographer, winning a Golden Globe, Emmys and an Olivier. Now, she is back on Broadway. She discusses Trump, the Kennedy Center and where the US goes next
ebbie Allen once found herself judging the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City alongside a charismatic property developer named Donald Trump. He had just bought an 86-metre superyacht named Nabila and rebranded it the Trump Princess. Eager to flaunt his prize, he invited Allen, a dancer, choreographer, actor and director, and her sister, the actor Phylicia Rashad, aboard for a private tour.
The opulence of the vessel was astonishing, Allen recalls: there was a bathroom carved from lapis lazuli, a fully equipped nightclub and fine paintings hanging on the walls. “It was incredible. I remember him telling me: ‘Debbie, you can have a party on this.’ I said: ‘If I do it, honey, it’s going to be all Black people.’”
Four decades later, the Trump that Allen once knew as a “showman” is now the architect of a deeply polarised US. She struggles to reconcile the affable pageant judge of her past with the authoritarian figure of the present. “He was a fun guy back then,” she muses. “I don’t know what happened.”
