She’s proud of what this version achieves, especially its new curiosity for the realities surrounding the Sharks. Three-star garland earstud with diamonds, $2,100 at Maria Tash “Joan’s” 18-k yellow- and white-gold ring with diamonds $8,250 at Established Jewelery Ramona Rosales It was like this really cool, very expensive, awesome summer camp vibe.” Dress, $5,990 at Michael Kors Collection, 790 Madison Ave. “It was five or six days of sweaty, dancing bliss.” She remembers kicking back with her foot up on a break, surveying the surreal landscape of a massive Spielberg set: “You’ve got Steve in the corner in Video Village, sneaking a Pop-Tart, and then you’ve got the Shark girls having a conversation over there, and the Shark boys and the Jet boys had this ball they would kick around. She looks back particularly fondly on shooting the “Dance at the Gym” number: “One of the only times you really see all the Sharks and the Jets together in one scene,” she says. Man, it was so random.” But the consummate Broadway professional soldiered on. “I was in pre-production, and I jumped up to hug someone, and twisted my ankle. Still, the journey wasn’t without its bumps: DeBose shot the film while nursing a sprained ankle, injured while just “being human,” she says. As the queer actress wrote in a Pride-themed essay, several years before she’d get the role: “My brown, singin’, dancin’, lady-lovin’ ass is AMERICA and I am so proud of who I am, what I stand for, and all I’ve accomplished so far.” Could there be a better performer to literally belt out “America”?

DeBose has big shoes to fill, and you don’t doubt that she will. Moreno won an Oscar - the first Latina ever to do so. The 30-year-old DeBose steps into the role Rita Moreno played in the 1961 movie, as the girlfriend of the Sharks’ leader, Bernardo, and friend to his sister, the lovelorn Maria. Shooting wrapped in 2019, but you know how these things go in the pandemic era. Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated take on the classic, 1950s-set musical, with a new screenplay by Tony Kushner, is finally here.

Rita Moreno nearly quit ‘West Side Story’ in 1961: ‘It felt horrible’

Nicki minaj right by my side on stage