One Nightstand with Ariana DeBose

In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

At this season’s Golden Globes, Ariana DeBose got to do something the rest of us can only dream of: drink a martini with Stanley Tucci. “We stood in line and we chatted and we got to the front of the line and I ordered a martini with him,” she says. “I was like, night made. I’m good. I could go home now.” So how does Tucci like it? “A vodka martini, up with a twist. I was like, hallelujah. We have the same taste.”

DeBose’s journey to one of Hollywood’s glossiest nights was slow and then sudden. She spent a decade on Broadway, appearing in Bring It On: The Musical, A Bronx Tale, and the original production of Hamilton, then blew up when Steven Spielberg cast her in West Side Story. The role earned her an Oscar, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe, though the clean sweep posed an interesting question: what to do next.

“The last couple of years I’ve been very diligent about not doing the same thing twice,” she says. “I think if you’re looking at a bird’s-eye view, you’re like: The math doesn’t math. Why did you do that? But I went where I thought the challenges were, and each and every one of the parts I’ve accepted and teams I’ve worked with taught me something about my talent.”

Her most recent project, Love Hurts, presented one such challenge. A lively action comedy, DeBose stars opposite fellow Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan as a wronged hitman (hitwoman?) who seeks revenge on her former colleagues. “I’ve always been inspired by women in the action genre,” she says, citing Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde and Angelina Jolie in Salt. “But I don’t always see women of color or queer women. My character in Love Hurts is not specifically queer, but I just thought it was a fun opportunity to see what I had to offer. I was like, I have a dance background, action sequences are movement, albeit very aggressive. I wanted to play.”

This mix of representation and dramatic playfulness are recurring themes in the books DeBose brought for us to talk about. First up is a children’s book, See You On The Other Side by Rachel Montez Minor. “I love this book because I feel like it gives children a chance to understand the feelings and emotions of what happens when you lose a loved one,” she says. “I was maybe 11 or 12 when my great-grandmother died. This book is definitely more of an entry report for those that are younger, but even at that age, it was very hard to understand death. I think we look at it with a negative connotation when I actually think, being a spiritual person myself, it doesn’t have to be negative.”

Minor has described in previous interviews coming up with the story in a dream, which is something DeBose relates to. “The first time I hosted the Tonys, that [performance] was sort of from a dream space,” she says of her 2022 gig. “The great thing was I had the bones of an epic mashup because different parts of that number we had built, many of my collaborators, Benjamin Rauhala and Kurt Crowley, had been building over seven years. And so we took that and expanded on it. But some of how it looked, I dreamt. I dreamt the color scheme and I knew I needed to wear white.”

Second is The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell. “If I open the book and I get through the first five pages and I’m not asleep, we’ve got something happening here,” she says of the propulsive thriller, which tells the story of an intergenerational cult living out of a Chelsea, London townhouse. “I do love that it takes place in London,” she says. “I can imagine having been there, I can imagine what these parts of town look like.” DeBose’s fondness for the British capital is personal, dating back to a London Palladium performance she gave in the summer of 2023.

“It was on the heels of that BAFTA [performance],” she says. “I went into it kind of nervous, like, Oh man, I still think I’m a good performer. I hope people come and enjoy the show with me. We all worked really hard on it, and they did. It was so alive and so visceral, and I felt like my audience was willing to play… It was honestly one of the best performances I’ve ever given.”

DeBose’s third book is a queer romance novel: Something To Talk About by Meryl Wilsner. “I identify as a queer woman, and there’s not a lot of queer material in the ways of romance novels,” she says. “And so this one, it tickled me in the best ways.” The book tells the story of a TV showrunner who is falsely rumored to be having an affair with her assistant; over time, the false rumor turns out to have some truth to it, offering an interesting insight into the dynamics of a modern workplace romance. “There’s so many people who do meet their spouse or their partner at work,” she says. “How do you handle that? How do you balance it? Especially age-gap relationships, all of that. And I was just like, Oh, I see myself in this. I get it.”

Fourth up is a bestseller: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. “I am a big fan of Taylor on the whole, I love her writing style, and it’s not traditionally queer based, but there’s a queer element here,” she says. The book delves into the challenges of sustaining a career in Hollywood and the frustration that comes with being underestimated, something DeBose relates to. “I’m a multi-hyphenate talent. But here’s the thing, I think people not only underestimate you when you do many things, but society is built to put you in a box so that they understand the one thing that you are,” she says. “It happens to people like J.Lo. That woman is so many things — she’s brilliant — and the way that I watch the industry, at times, not know what to do with her. That’s a shame, because she contains multitudes — and so do I.”

DeBose’s fifth book, Cher: The Memoir, tells the story of another woman who contains multitudes. “I just started it, so I haven’t completed it yet,” she says. “I also recommend you listen to her audio book while you’re reading it. It’s a wonderful enhanced experience.” She adds: “I love how real she is… I think sometimes autobiographies can feel like they’re censored or they’re holding back. I don’t feel like she's holding back.”

Watch more from her One Nightstand interview below.