Key Takeaways
- Todrick Hall defended his slavery-themed musical Midnight, saying his grandmother made him and her other grandsons pick cotton one day a year to understand their family’s history.
- Hall said “I am not anti-Black” and reported racist abuse and death threats as critics accused the show, which reverses slavery’s racial hierarchy in its second act, of exploiting Black trauma.
- Hall announced Midnight’s extension at New York’s Daryl Roth Theatre through Jan. 3, 2027, and said the debate has sparked interest among Black and brown teenagers.
Todrick Hall is pushing back against accusations that his controversial musical Midnight exploits Black trauma, revealing that his grandmother once made him and her other grandsons work in cotton fields to ensure they understood their family’s history. Hall shared the deeply personal story while defending the slavery-themed production against a wave of backlash, racist insults and death threats.
“My grandmother, whose name is Ethel, who one of the lead characters in my show is named after, used to make me and all of her grandsons go and work in the cotton fields for one day a year,” Hall said in an Instagram video.
His grandmother was not enslaved, he clarified, but had picked cotton for 25 cents a week when she was young because “there weren’t a lot of options that she was afforded.”
Hall said her message to the boys was direct: “I want you to understand where we came from and where you could someday be.”
That history has taken on new significance amid the uproar surrounding Midnight, which Hall wrote, directed, choreographed and stars in at New York’s Daryl Roth Theatre. The musical follows an enslaved Black man who becomes involved with the white fiancé of the woman who enslaves him, then flips the racial hierarchy in its second act by depicting Black people enslaving white people.
Critics have accused Hall of reducing the horrors of slavery to glossy spectacle and historically revisionist provocation.
Hall, who first gained national recognition on American Idol before establishing himself across music, theater and reality television, insists that was never his intention.
“I am not anti-Black. I have never been,” Hall said. He acknowledged that some of his previous videos depicted Black people in ways viewers found objectionable, adding, “I listened to that feedback. I stopped making videos like that.”
But he drew a firm distinction between those projects and Midnight. “This artistry, I do ten toes stand by,” he declared. “I think that it is beautiful.”
Hall also rejected the idea that the loudest online voices could dictate how all Black audiences should respond. “I don’t think that any one person should be speaking for Black people as though we are a monolith,” he said.
Hall admitted the criticism has taken a severe personal toll, even as he continues leading the production through eight performances each week. According to him, the response has included “people telling me that I should kill myself,” death threats and messages calling him “a c**n,” “a disgrace to Black people” and “an embarrassment to the theater community.”
He stressed that audiences have every right to reject the musical, but argued that the hostility has moved far beyond criticism of the work. “At the end of the day, this is art,” he said. “You don’t have to agree with the art that everyone makes.”
The production has nevertheless secured an extended run. Midnight is scheduled to continue through Jan. 3, 2027, and Hall said the final performance was already packed.
He also claimed Black and brown teenagers had petitioned their parents and teachers to include the show in upcoming New York theater trips after seeing the debate on TikTok.
“I’m so happy that the story is touching people and causing conversation,” Hall said, “because theater and art should.”
