Get to Know Stage and Screen Star Warren Egypt Franklin — Host of the 2025 Blumey Awards!
May 13, 2025 / Blog
Charlotte holds a special place for actor Warren Egypt Franklin and that makes hosting this year’s Blumey Awards (Sunday, May 18 at Belk Theater) especially sweet.
It’s not just because Franklin’s come here twice as an instructor with Broadway Dreams, a program where Broadway talent works with local aspiring performers, or that he portrayed Carolina legend Cam Newton in the TV series “American Sports Story” or even that he loves eating at Bojangles.
Franklin’s career has been zooming along — from getting hired right out of college as a lead in the “Hamilton” national tour to landing recurring roles in TV series like “Grown-ish” and “Diarra from Detroit” — but you could say things really started to take off for him on a trip to Charlotte, during his freshman year at Baldwin Wallace University.
That’s when the Cleveland, Ohio native conquered one of his biggest fears.
“I used to be terrified of flying…” he said. “I have taken the bus to Florida, I have taken the bus to Texas from Cleveland and if my (high school) football team or my basketball team ever had a trip, I would just meet everyone on a bus. … And the first time I ever flew was to Charlotte, North Carolina.”
Franklin got up the courage in order to help a damsel in distress: his college roommate’s girlfriend.
When her Prom date backed out just a few days before the big event, Franklin and his roommate (Northwest School of the Arts alum Matthew Pitts) decided they would both fly to Charlotte to escort her. That’s how he ended up not only taking his first flight, but randomly attending NWSA’s 2016 Prom.
“Charlotte holds a special place in my heart,” said Franklin, who now also has family members who have relocated from Cleveland to the Queen City. ”Yeah, Charlotte's just a nifty, little place. I always have a good time there and I'm obsessed with Bojangles so I always make sure I get some when I'm there.”
It was thanks to his college roommate, too, that he first heard about the Blumey Awards and met some of Charlotte’s rising stars, like Eva Noblezada and Reneé Rapp.
“I've always thought that Charlotte has some of the most amazing talent,” said Franklin, who was in town again a couple weeks ago for a Broadway Dreams master class.
“The kids are bold in Charlotte. They're bold and they're polished and if they're not polished, they have this raw mechanism talent that just needs a little… shine on it. So when I come to Charlotte, my job is pretty easy, because the students really know what they're doing. ... They're super collaborative, they're easy to work with.”
Franklin, who has been on the faculty of Broadway Dreams since 2020, is also an alumnus of the program. Broadway Dreams’ weeklong summer intensives and weekend popup events give students the opportunity to work with professionals, like Franklin, to refine their dancing, singing and acting. This year’s Charlotte intensive runs July 27 - August 3, jointly hosted by Central Piedmont Community College and Blumenthal Arts.
Franklin said the organization strives to ensure that finances never hold back talent, with 50% of participants receiving need-based full or partial scholarships to the program.
“We believe that money should never come in the way of … being able to give arts education to children,” he said. “It's the most important thing right now, especially with the economy and politically and … arts education and arts funding being ripped away year by year.”
Hosting a Ceremony He Never Got to Experience as a Student
Franklin attended Cleveland School of the Arts for high school, where he majored in acting and minored in dance. As a freshman, he surprised everyone by getting cast as the lead in the school’s spring production of “Footloose.” Instead of being stressed, as the director worried he could be at a mere 14 years old, Franklin said it just made him want to work harder. That’s when he began seriously considering a professional acting career.
But one thing Cleveland didn’t have at the time was a regional high school musical theater competition. Franklin desperately wanted the chance to compete and go to the national competition, the Jimmy Awards, in New York. Back then, he was convinced that he would not only go, he said, but win top honors.
“It's so funny, I was just talking about this,” he said. “I was more outspoken as a kid just about my talent… I was a little crazy kid but I knew I could go to the Jimmies, right, and I cried and moaned and talked about it over and over and over again.”
He met with the president of Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, the country’s largest performing arts complex outside of New York, along with his high school principal to advocate for the program. And exactly one year after Franklin graduated, the Dazzle Awards, Cleveland’s version of the Blumeys, celebrated its inaugural year.
Back then, missing out on the opportunity was tough, Franklin said, but now he’s got a different perspective.
“I think about it all the time and they said it when I've come back to the Dazzle Awards. They were like, ‘This young man is one of the reasons that we have this awards show.’”
Some 10 years later, he’s proud to have played a role in starting the program.
“That’s what it’s about,” he said. “It’s not about me going to the Jimmies. It’s about all of those other students, that their lives get changed, that they get to participate in something … The Dazzle Awards and the Jimmys will be the highlight of their year and maybe can give them the push” to pursue musical theater in college and professionally.
Lessons Learned
Franklin said one thing he wished he’d known when he started his professional career was that everything would work out.
“I never second guessed myself and my talent and what I could bring to the table,” he said. “I always knew that I would be the most hardworking person that stepped in the room… I still feel that way today. But I questioned whether I would be able to afford opportunities because of my skin color and because of the way I looked.”
There were agents who came to his college and told him he lacked an “all-American look” so they didn’t see television or movies in his future. He internalized that for a while, thinking those opportunities might not exist for him.
“And obviously that wasn't true,” he said. “I was the first person to book TV and film from my school but I kind of always had just closed that window of opportunity in my mind a little bit.”
He thought, “‘I'm Black, I'm big, I'm loud enough for Broadway, maybe, but definitely not for … the silver screen’ … We try to play casting directors and we are not casting directors. You just have to do your best work and kind of just leave it be. I still have to remind myself that.”
Last year was jam packed with roles for Franklin and he thinks 2025 may be even bigger. Immediately after the Blumey Awards, he’s heading to Canada to film a new movie. He can't yet share the details but said he’s “blessed” to be part of the production, a comedy/action film with a star-studded cast.
Upon his return, he plans to continue working on an EP he’s been recording for the last few years and to release its debut single.
“You know, when you're first doing something you get trepidacious and scared … I just need to release it and just throw it out there.”
He’s got about 20 songs recorded, he said, and needs to whittle that down to around eight. It’s been a labor of love.
“The first time I laid a track down for that (the debut single) was in 2021. Just last year I added live horns to the song and new harmonies to the bridge so I kind of never stop working on things. I’m a huge perfectionist, especially when it comes to music … but when it's out it'll be out and I think people will realize that it doesn't sound like anything out today and I'm very excited for people to hear that.”
Another big life lesson, he said, is embracing opportunities when they arrive, even unexpectedly. Just two weeks out of college, Franklin got cast in his dream role, as the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in “Hamilton.” He never thought it would be possible at his young age.
It turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences of his life.
“We try to talk ourselves out of things that are for us to say we're too old, too young, too tall, too skinny, too fat, too whatever but when something is in your purpose and when you're supposed to be in the vehicle that God is driving you towards something, then it's your seat and no one else can buckle that seat belt but you.”
