Carisa Lee

Se­nior Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Pop­u­lar Amer­i­can ac­tress Phyli­cia Rashad de­scribes Trinidad and To­ba­go as “mag­i­cal”.

The ac­tress, who is fa­mous for her por­tray­al of at­tor­ney and moth­er of five chil­dren Clair Huxtable on the NBC sit­com The Cos­by Show, is vis­it­ing T&T for the Car­ni­val sea­son.

As she toured parts of the coun­try yes­ter­day, Rashad, a mul­ti­ple Em­my and Tony award win­ner, ap­peared to be mes­merised by T&T. She said it was sim­i­lar to what she ex­pe­ri­enced while work­ing on Broad­way in the Orig­i­nal Pro­duc­tion of The Wiz in 1975, along with the late Trinida­di­an ac­tor Ge­of­frey Hold­er.

Rashad played a munchkin.

“In the ear­ly part of my ca­reer, I had the good for­tune to work with Ge­of­frey Hold­er and now I re­alise what was so mag­i­cal about the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of The Wiz, be­cause he brought Trinidad in­to that pro­duc­tion,” she said.

Hold­er was a Trinida­di­an artist, dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er who won two Tony awards for his di­rec­tion and cos­tume de­sign of the all-black mu­si­cal ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz.

“The colour, the rhythm, the mag­ic, Trinidad,” she said.

Since her ar­rival, Tourism Trinidad has post­ed pho­tos with Rashad at the Bam­boo Cathe­dral in Ch­aguara­mas and at Phase II Pan Groove’s pa­n­yard, where she met vet­er­an com­pos­er and arranger Len “Boogsie” Sharpe.

“Peo­ple don’t un­der­stand the steel­pan, I mean peo­ple out­side of your cul­ture do not nec­es­sar­i­ly un­der­stand the mag­nif­i­cence of it, the sci­ence of it, the mu­si­cal­ly of it, the dis­ci­pline of it, the joy, I could hard­ly sleep last night,” she said.

Rashad said she now knows the di­ver­si­ty of T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

“The en­er­gy, see­ing this large group of mu­si­cians from dif­fer­ent parts of the world, mind you, from dif­fer­ent cul­tures and I think that’s what unique about Trinidad that I re­al­ly love,” she ex­plained.

The ac­tress said her daugh­ter told her about the cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty of this coun­try and how every­one is em­braced as one when she vis­it­ed in 2023.

“There is a wealth of cul­ture here, of his­to­ry here, of con­nec­tion here and I’m won­der­ing how is it that all of these dif­fer­ent peo­ple come to be in this one place, liv­ing like this,” Rashad said.

Aside from her lead role in The Cos­by Show, which ran from 1984 to 1992, Rashad has al­so starred in For Col­ored Girls (2010), Good Deeds (2012), Creed (2015), Creed II (2018), and Creed III (2023) among her wide fil­mog­ra­phy and tele­vi­sion work.

The ac­tress is be­ing host­ed by the for­mer pres­i­dent of Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, Trinida­di­an-Amer­i­can schol­ar and sur­geon Dr Wayne Fred­er­ick and his wife.

And al­though there are still some days to go un­til mas­quer­aders pa­rade the streets in their colour­ful cos­tumes and all their bliss, Rashad has al­ready con­clud­ed her thoughts on T&T.

“It’s a mod­el for liv­ing in the world,” she said.