Todrick Hall on His Original Musical Midnight: “It’s A Dream Come True”

In the fall of 2025, Todrick Hall made a surprise announcement on his YouTube channel: he was creating his first original musical.

“I’m about to embark on perhaps the most ambitious journey of my career,” the Texas-born creator explained in a rare confessional straight to the camera before revealing the musical’s title: Midnight.

At the time of the announcement, the one-time American Idol hopeful had already spent more than a decade as one of YouTube’s most popular and multi-talented creators. His signature musical parodies, mash-ups and original music videos raked in millions of views and helped define virality throughout the 2010s, eventually leading to major opportunities like sitting on the judges panel of RuPaul’s Drag Race, his own MTV reality show and second-place finishes on both The Masked Singer and Celebrity Big Brother. But wearing multiple hats to bring his own musical to life would be an altogether new kind of challenge.

“It’s maybe unprecedented,” Hall tells Ticketmaster on a break from rehearsals for the show in midtown Manhattan. “I’m not sure that anyone else has ever written, directed, choreographed, composed, and starred in their own musical.”

Set in the 19th century, Midnight transports audiences to life in the American South through the eyes of Rail, an enslaved Black man living on a plantation (played by Hall). However, beyond that cursory outline, the musical has maintained a certain air of mystery ahead of its Off-Broadway premiere, considering Hall has purposely kept mum on certain details like, say, plot, narrative, or what type of hero’s journey Rail embarks upon in the show.

“What I love the most about this Midnight experience is that this content can’t be seen someplace else,” he says. “You can’t go and Google the story and get a full synopsis of it. It’s not based on any source material. It’s a completely original story from start to finish, so the only way an audience can experience it is to go watch the show.”

Opening October 15 at the Daryl Roth Theatre, Midnight boasts a dynamic cast that includes the likes of The Voice Season 26 finalist Jeremy Beloate, Tony nominee Sidney DuPont and Autumn Hurlbert, the Broadway star who got her start as runner-up on the cult-favorite 2008 MTV series Legally Blonde: The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods.

“I love the fact that I have assembled a group of people where no one is jaded in this room. Every single person is, to quote one of my favorite composers, ‘young, scrappy, and hungry.’” They’re all ready to make a show that will turn heads, blow the roof off of the Daryl Roth Theatre and demand that somehow, somewhere on Broadway, they make an opening for this musical.”

Below, Hall talks about bringing Midnight to New York City, crafting the show’s diverse musical score, how YouTube helped prepare him to create an original musical and more.

 

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Congratulations on bringing Midnight to New York! How’s the rehearsal process been so far?

Thank you, I appreciate that. It’s a dream come true every day. I’ve had so many chapters in my life where I was running this big race and I got to the finish line, and oftentimes, this industry is just so fickle and unpredictable. You never know what’s gonna happen. You get a Broadway show and then that show closes, you get a TV show and you’re on a competition show and you don’t get that Kelly Clarkson moment.

So I feel very, very strongly that it’s really important for me as an artist to make sure that, with every step of the way, I am trying my hardest to be as active in the moment as I possibly can. I just want to be able to really enjoy and embrace every single second that I get in this rehearsal studio. Because the reality is that the world of musical theater is so unknown right now. Shows that, in theory, should be successful are closing. So to make the experience about whether or not we run or sell tickets, or whether or not people love it is a game that you can’t really predict. You have to just build every single second of the show with love and hope that people taste all of those ingredients that you’ve baked into this musical, and then love them and come back for seconds.

This entire show is such a labor of love — you wrote it, you’re directing and starring in it. What sparked the inspiration for Midnight?

In the middle of the pandemic, I was in an interracial relationship. And it was a really challenging time to be in an interracial relationship because there was so much discourse, the Black Lives Matter movement was at its height, and having those conversations was really difficult. And I saw a post somewhere — you know how inspirational posts pop on your Instagram — that said something that I would horribly misquote if I tried. But it said something about, “When words fail, music is a thing that can express emotions more than words would be able to.”

So I just decided, I want to figure out a way to combine all of these strong thoughts and feelings I’m having about the world and racism and homophobia and all those things, and sort of go back to where they all started — like the 1800s — and write a musical that was timely and timeless. Something that was really poignant and relevant to what we were going through right now, but that could have been just as relevant in the 1800s.

The story just came to me. As a musical theater nerd, I was getting frustrated by what I was seeing onstage, and rather than complain about it, I decided to sit down, put pen to paper and write the show that I would love to see. And I have written the musical that I think possesses all of the qualities that made me fall in love with my favorite musicals like Aida and Wicked and Hairspray and The Color Purple and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. It’s just a big smorgasbord of all of the different genres and motifs that I have fallen in love with in musical theater. You can tell if you’re a musical theater fan that this musical was written by someone who’s also a musical theater fanatic.

Your career has been so multifaceted, but was writing an original musical always on your bucket list?

Absolutely. I’ve been rewriting children’s fairy tales since I was very, very young. I had done versions of The Wizard of Oz and Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel and [The] Ugly Duckling. I always knew that after my “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” era was done, I would want to return to my first love. There’s nothing like musical theater, and as we become a society more and more obsessed with staring at our phones and getting lost in TikTok and short-form entertainment, there’s something that becomes increasingly special about people having to turn their phones off, listening to a live orchestra, listening to live vocalists and having to completely surrender and be submerged in a story and a narrative.

You’ve kept a lot of details about the show’s plot and message close to the vest ahead of opening. Is there a particular reason for that?

What I love the most about this Midnight experience is that this content can’t be seen someplace else. You can’t go and Google the story and get a full synopsis of it. It’s not based on any source material. It’s a completely original story from start to finish, so the only way an audience can experience it is to go watch the show. When we did it in London [in the fall of 2025], I was like, “Well, people are gonna tell the story, they’re gonna ruin it.”

And what I found is that people have been yearning for something like this for so long that everybody was, on their own, just being like, “I don’t want to rob you of the experience. You should go see it.” I’d never experienced anything like that. I know that there are shows like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child that remind the audience to “Keep the Secret,” but we’ve never had to put a message out like that. People just did it because they felt they should, and that was really exciting to me.

In addition to writing, directing and choreographing, you’re also starring in Midnight as the protagonist, Rail. Tell me a bit about your character and his journey in the show.

My character Rail reminds me a lot of myself. I mean, since I was a kid, people have been like, “He sho’ got some pretty eyes out in the country.” The church ladies would always say to my mom, “That boy got some pretty eyes.” That’s how people would identify me, because my grandmother had so many grandsons. So in the show, the girl that my character falls in love with sings a song called “Pretty Eyes” that was written about my childhood.

But Rail is a person who has been robbed of any sort of innocence. Most people, when we’re born, we dream big and we’re not afraid. We’re unapologetic about saying what it is we want. And somewhere along the line, reality sets in, and pessimistic humans get into our heads and tell us to maybe not shoot for the stars, shoot for the hilltops instead.

And Rail is a victim of that same society. Especially because he’s a man who’s enslaved, and he wouldn’t dare dream of ever owning anything or having a home — he’s a man who’s just trying to survive. But he has a very specific, special wish, and I think that the wish is just so real and so raw. And he ends up falling in love and makes the wish that ends up changing his life.

How would you describe the overall score and the sound of the music in Midnight?

You know what? I think that I’m so close to the show that I would not be the person that would be able to accurately describe the music. I think that a lot of the music sounds pop and contemporary, but there are some songs that, if you didn’t know they were [written by] me, you would think that they were Rodgers and Hammerstein because they’re so traditional. There’s rock music, there’s gospel music, there’s traditional musical theater, there are pop songs, there’s R&B. There’s even a number that feels like it could be a dance song — with the right remixing, it could be a Rihanna and Calvin Harris collab.

So I think the musical influences are all over the place, but because it all comes from my brain, anybody who’s watched one of the 700 videos that I have on my YouTube channel, I think they’d be really satisfied by this. It’s a lot more melodic. It’s a sung-through musical, so it’s an opera in the same vein as a Les Misérables or a RENT or a Hamilton. They hardly ever speak and even when they do, it’s with underscoring. Yeah, I think that’s the best way to describe the music.

That actually segues perfectly into my next question: what was the inspiration behind making the musical sung-through?

I think that music heightens every emotion. I’m a person who loves musical theater but I also have severe ADHD. And in every musical — even my favorite musicals — there are moments when I have to be honest: when Doctor Dillamond or the Wizard starts to sing in Wicked, I am like, “Okaaaay…” I start yawning a little bit sometimes ’cause I’ve seen it so many times. [Yawns] I’m yawning right now just thinking about it. So I wanted to make a musical that, even though it’s a pretty hefty musical and there’s a lot going on, it sort of flies by. And I also wanted to just challenge myself to see if I could create conversation and a back-and-forth dialogue with just music. That was a cool challenge for me.

You’ve gone viral so many times on YouTube — you mentioned “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” earlier, but I’m also thinking of even earlier videos like Straight Outta Oz, “Disney Dudez” and “I LIKE BOYS.” How did those experiences help prepare you creatively for Midnight?

I think that being on YouTube has really helped me curate content and understand what it takes to keep an audience’s attention. You have to grab them within the first five seconds or there’s no chance you’re going viral. And because I came from that world, I think applying that same context to a live theater show is something that people don’t usually do.

Writing songs because you know that they’re going to serve the story, but also because they will do well in a live performance or on TikTok — those are all things that I consider when I’m writing the show because I’m thinking of the brand. And because I am a choreographer and a dancer first, before I was ever a songwriter or a performer or an actor, when I’m writing the score, I already think about how it’s going to move on stage.

Even being a drag artist has helped me because I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve done where the director is like, “You’re gonna walk up the stairs and you’re gonna be holding this, but you’re gonna be wearing a hoop skirt.” Well, any drag queen or any self-respecting gay would know that you can’t walk up a flight of stairs without holding your gown — that’s part of the fun and the pageantry of it all. So I have to make sure that I’m already thinking about how someone’s going to do a costume change or a wig change or how they’re going to get up a flight of stairs. So I think that those are the perks of wearing so many hats. And doing YouTube and doing so many tours, and having to be on the front-facing parts of creating a brand has really prepared me for this…as prepared as anyone could be.

You had a significant hand in casting the show as well. What can audiences expect from the rest of the company?

[Every] single person in this show [came here] because they love musical theater. They moved away from their towns, where it would be much easier and much more affordable for them to live a normal life. Daily life would be easier. The food would be cheaper. The space and the apartments would be better. If we’re here and we’re sacrificing all those incredible qualities of life, we want to be able to be a part of something, even to be the smallest cog in a bigger machine to make something that we’re like, “Wow! I helped contribute to that piece going into the musical theater canon.”

That’s what we all bought our plane ticket or our Greyhound ticket to move to this big city to do: to make an impact on the world of musical theater. And I love the fact that I have assembled a group of people where no one is jaded in this room. Every single person is, to quote one of my favorite composers, “young, scrappy, and hungry.” They’re all ready to make a show that will turn heads, blow the roof off of the Daryl Roth Theatre and demand that somehow, somewhere on Broadway, they make an opening for this musical.

What do you hope audiences take away from the experience of seeing Midnight?

I believe that what we’re creating here is what a lot of people who love musical theater have been begging for, asking for, and waiting for. It’s a musical that they didn’t even know that they needed. It’s powerful: the humanity, the way the show rips you open and puts you back together again, makes you think about things that you might not have been able to think about from a different perspective. That’s what theater should do.

I had a really successful producer come and talk to us about doing a show, and he said, “People don’t want to think anymore in the theater.” And I was like, “I don’t think that’s true.” People love something that’s thought-provoking and that leaves you with something to take home and consider and talk about. And I think that this show does that.

Midnight tickets are available on Ticketmaster.