About Brian Stokes Mitchell
Brian Stokes Mitchell is an American actor and singer. A powerful baritone, he has been one of the central leading men of the Broadway theater since the 1990s. He has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and a nomination for a Grammy Award. In 2016 he received the Isabelle Stevenson Award.
Mitchell won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Fred Graham / Petruchio in the Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate . His other Tony-nominated performances were in Ragtime , King Hedley II , and Man of La Mancha . Mitchell's other notable roles include in Oh, Kay! , Jelly's Last Jam , Kiss of the Spider Woman , Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street , South Pacific , Les Misérables , Guys and Dolls , Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown , Oliver! , Camelot , and Shuffle Along .
He is also known for his roles on television including as Dr. Justin Jackson in the CBS medical drama Trapper John, M.D. . Mitchell also had recurring roles on shows such as Frasier, Glee, Mr. Robot, The Path, Billions, and The Good Fight. He took the role of Walt in the CBS sitcom Fam . He received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album nomination for The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets in 2001.
Mitchell was born in Seattle, Washington, the youngest of four children of George Mitchell, an electronics engineer, and his wife Lillian , a school administrator. Mitchell grew up at various U.S. military bases overseas, where his father was a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy. When the family settled in San Diego, California, he began acting in junior high musicals. He did not attend college, having begun performing professionally while a student at Patrick Henry High School, although he did have private teachers in both acting and voice in his teen years. He has said that he studied film scoring, orchestration, and conducting through UCLA. Prior to Ragtime, he was known professionally as Brian Mitchell.
Mitchell has a number of television and film credits, including the role of John Dolan in Roots: The Next Generations , and a seven-year stint as Dr. Justin 'Jackpot' Jackson on Trapper John, M.D. from 1979 to 1986. Mitchell made several appearances as a celebrity panelist on episodes of $25,000 Pyramid and $100,000 Pyramid in the 1980s, and was considered one of the game's better celebrity players, helping a contestant win the $100,000 grand prize on the latter show in February 1986. Mitchell also participated as a celebrity panelist in four weeks' worth of episodes of The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, a short-lived NBC game show that ran from 1983 to 1984.
Mitchell first performed on Broadway in the musical Mail in 1988, with music by Michael Rupert and lyrics by Jerry Cocker, winning the Theatre World award. His Broadway credits include an all-black revival of George and Ira Gershwin's Oh, Kay! , Jelly's Last Jam based on the works of jazz artist Jelly Roll Morton, and Kander and Ebb's Kiss of the Spider Woman . He played recurring roles as Hilary Banks' news anchor fiancé Trevor Newsworthy/Collins on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and supplied the singing voice of Jethro in the animated feature The Prince of Egypt . He originated the role of Coalhouse Walker Jr, in the musical Ragtime, which opened on Broadway in January 1998. He received a 1998 Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. He appeared in the 1999 revival of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate as Fred Graham / Petruchio, winning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He appeared on Broadway in King Hedley II in 2001 and Man of La Mancha in 2002 . In 2002 he acted in Frasier as Dr. Frasier Crane's upstairs neighbor and nemesis Cam Winston. He played the title role in the 2002 Kennedy Center production of Sweeney Todd, part of the Stephen Sondheim celebration.
He appeared in the New York City Center Encores! staged concert productions of Jule Styne's Do Re Mi , Bob Merrill's Carnival! , Kismet , and The Band Wagon in 2014. On June 9, 2005, Mitchell appeared in a concert version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific at Carnegie Hall. He starred as Emile, alongside Reba McEntire as Nellie Forbush and Alec Baldwin as Luther Billis. The production was taped and telecast by PBS in 2006. Of his performance, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, "As for Mr. Mitchell, his place in the pantheon of romantic musical leads is now guaranteed."
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