Alabama’s Jordan Fisher came to national TV prominence in November when he won the 25th season of “Dancing With the Stars” with his professional dancing partner, Lindsay Arnold. But some fans may not realize that Fisher has been acting, dancing and singing more than half his life.
Born and raised in Birmingham, Fisher caught the performing bug early. His fifth-grade crush asked him to join the drama club with her, and he started acting, singing and dancing that first day. That summer, he joined the Red Mountain Theatre Company, one of the South’s premier fine arts education centers. He went from his first school play to community theater to regional theater to joining a professional theater company in a short amount of time.
He wants to do it all – music, theater, as well as acting. He released an EP of pop-soul-R&B music in August 2016, and was featured on the soundtrack of the Disney hit “Moana.” He’s set to release a full album of R&B music this year.
He’s had recurring roles on multiple TV series, including “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” and of course the big win on DWTS.
He made his Broadway debut in the megahit “Hamilton,” playing the roles of John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton.
And he turns 24 in April.
– Allison Law
You were born and raised in Alabama. Talk about your upbringing here.
It’s kind of incredible, when I say that I’m from Alabama. I don’t really have much of an accent, and people are like, for real? …
I can’t think of a better place to spend the majority of my childhood. Standards and morals and all of these things, growing up in the South, that’s something in my opinion that’s priceless. Very proud to be an Alabamian and very proud to have spent a majority of my childhood there. (As a teenager, he traveled back and forth between Alabama and Los Angeles for four years before moving to LA permanently.)
How quickly time passes. Growing up such a fan of sports and people and a love for my family and all of these things, I feel like the root of all of that started with my environment growing up, and that’s Birmingham, and I couldn’t be more proud of the growth of that city.
You acted in the Broadway smash “Hamilton” (from November 2016 through March 2017). Talk about that.
I love it, I miss it to death. It’s kind of hard, when you want to do everything, which is what I do. I wear all the hats, and do TV and film and Broadway, and I’m a recording artist and a writer and a producer and an author, it’s hard to just be able to do one thing for a long period of time. You kind of have to alternate all these things. Eventually, the end goal is that I can pick and choose whatever I want, whenever I want, and right now it’s a matter of having to continue to strike while the iron is hot, which keeps me super busy. It keeps me constantly honing and learning and building my craft and my world as an artist. That will eventually get me back to Broadway, the same way it will always take me back to TV and film and music and touring. But Broadway, I love it just a little bit more than everything else.
I have to ask about “Dancing With the Stars.” How was that experience?
Unbelievable. I learned a lot about myself, and Lindsay, she cracked the whip in all the right ways. It resulted in an amazing friendship. Really more of a family. That’s my favorite memory, taking away from all of this, is the family I got to build on that show, with Lindsay, with the other pros on the show. … We really put in a lot of time and energy and effort, and I’m just very grateful that America saw that and put in the votes.
Do you get back to Alabama very often?
I get back more frequently now. Ellie Woods is the love of my life. We actually grew up together at the Red Mountain Theatre Company. She is in school for clinical dietetics at the University of Alabama. We see each other every three weeks. That’s the bottom line, period, the end. Whether I go to Birmingham quietly and spend time with her in Tuscaloosa, or she comes to LA or meets me in whatever city I’m in, we see each other every three weeks. When you make the choice and you make the commitment, you make it work, period. We make it work.
