He went from sleeping on the street to succeeding on Broadway.
Hailee Kaleem Wright was preparing for auditions in public bathrooms, she was doing makeup on the subway, and she didn't have an address to put on her resume.
But that didn't stop her from crowning herself as Catherine of Aragon in the musical
Six,
which tells the story of Henry VIII's six wives.
Her story, which could also have her own musical, was told this week by the American publication
People
.
When Kaleem Wright moved from Houston to New York things started to get very difficult very quickly.
"I fell in love with the theater," the actress confesses to
People
.
“My mom and I looked at each other and said, 'Let's pack our things and go to New York.
Let's try to do this.'
And it didn't go very well."
The actress, who is now 29 years old, was then a teenager who had just finished high school.
She moved in with her family, and both she and her mother, a singer who had worked her way up with minor roles in regional plays, began
auditioning
.
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The first problem turned out to be the lack of accommodation.
Prices and the lack of offers in the Big Apple greatly limited the options, and the family—in addition to Kaleem and her mother was her little brother, Joe—stayed in hotels.
"The money ran out quickly," recalls the interpreter.
Within weeks the family found themselves in the city's Department of Homeless Services program;
a moment that Wright describes as “one of the most dehumanizing processes I have ever experienced”.
They waited 16 hours in the offices before they could attend to them.
“The first place we went to was in Queens.
We had bedbugs and we saw horrible, horrible scenes,” she recalls.
The family supported themselves by working temps in retail stores and juggling their precarious lives with auditions and
casting calls
.
In April 2013, MTV portrayed her day-to-day life as a broke aspiring actress on the reality show
True Life.
“When it aired, we didn't even have cable, so I couldn't watch it.
I watched the direct on Twitter of people talking about my life, ”the actress now tells.
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Tired of their precarious life, the family returned to Houston and Kaleem Wright got a job as a clerk.
But an audition made five months before her changed her life again.
Universal Studios Japan offered him a job at her theme park in Osaka.
“I was 20 years old and I was making the most money of my life,” the actress confesses to
People.
"I couldn't believe she auditioned for that job while living in a shelter."
Things were going well for Wright, until he returned to Houston.
“After coming back from Japan, my family and I were homeless again, which was not only devastating.
Mentally, it was catastrophic."
The actress burned her savings in no time.
“Just because they give you more money doesn't mean you'll know what to do with it.
It's almost like survivor's guilt.
When you get out of a difficult situation, you feel compelled to help others.
And I think I overstepped in that sense, ”she admits.
With just $200 in his account, Wright decided to take a chance.
“I took that money and got a damn one-way flight to New York.
It had been three or four months sleeping in the car, going in and out of hotels, and I felt miserable ”, he recounts about his brief stay back in Houston.
"I bet on myself."
The bet, this time, went well.
Last year Hailee Kaleem Wright made her Broadway debut with the musical
Paradise Square
, a performance that she has followed with that of the musical
Six
, winner of a Tony award and currently running in the theater mecca.
The story, much to the taste of the American public, has just given visibility to the actress, who in her interview repeats hackneyed phrases such as "I firmly believe that you never have to give up" and preaches the benefits of self-help books like
The Secret
.
Hailee Kaleem Wright now lives in New York with her mother and brother.
“To be a black girl from the South with very humble beginnings and make it to Broadway... It's not lost on me how highly likely I was to fail, and the fact that I could ultimately make it... I look at my life now and I'm not the same person".