He sang, and played the piano and drums, at church, and by middle school, he had formed an R&B cover band - Fresh Flights - that performed at shopping centers (among their first songs: “I Want You Back,” by the Jackson 5). “There’s a feeling you get when you listen to his music that makes you want to dance, makes you want to move,” Frost said. Michael Jackson was always part of the soundscape at 5, Frost was so winning while dancing to the singer’s songs on a party boat that the revelers threw money at him. “That definitely has a lot to do with how I carry myself, and how I respect others.”Įarly on, he developed two great passions: golf, which he picked up at 3 years old, and piano, which he started at 6. “I’ve been backed my entire life by very, very strong Black women,” he said. Named for the jazz great Miles Davis, Frost grew up moving back and forth between Maryland and Washington D.C., raised by his mother, a systems engineer, and his grandmother, a schoolteacher. (“I want to be bigger than Michael Jackson,” he said. In conversation, Frost is warm and gracious (he loves the words “humbled” and “blessed”), but also soft-spoken and measured, with a relentless positivity and an all-things-are-possible way of talking about his career. It’s not my job to persuade or convince them of anything, but what I do want them to do is have a better understanding of the things that he had to go through - whether it’s financial or emotional - to put this tour together, because nobody can deny, and this is the bottom line, the impact that he has had on culture and on music.” “People come here every day with different opinions and different feelings about Michael. “My responsibility, and my job, is to focus on the creative process of Michael,” he added. It picked up 10 Tony nominations, including one for best musical, and its producers, who include the Michael Jackson Estate, are planning to add a North American tour next year.įrost, during a pair of conversations about the show, was patient with questions about the allegations, but also chose his words carefully - taking a deep breath before answering, pausing often between thoughts - and made it clear that he would not be baited or badgered into expressing a position on whether Jackson was an abuser. But thus far, the show’s box office is healthy - in recent weeks “MJ” has been among the top-grossing productions on Broadway. The show, with a book by Lynn Nottage, the two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright, is set in 1992, before the allegations became public, and does not address that issue, which has prompted criticism from leading theater reviewers. It’s about one of the biggest pop artists in American history, but one whose legacy has been tarnished by allegations that he sexually abused children. “MJ,” of course, is not just any jukebox musical. “It’s one of those things where it just kind of feels like the stars align a little bit,” Frost said, “and you get that call and it’s in the palm of your hands to either take and embrace or to drop, and I decided to take it and embrace it.” The effect is uncanny: Although Frost insists he is not doing an impersonation, audiences describe feeling as if they are at a Michael Jackson concert. Now Frost, at 22, is on Broadway, drawing ovations nightly in the title role of “MJ,” a biomusical exploring Jackson’s creative process by imagining the final days of rehearsals for the “Dangerous” concert tour. It was good enough that they asked him to come to New York so they could see him in person. “Maybe I can.”įrost pleaded for a day to prepare, and then he taped a video to send to the show’s producers.
But he’d wanted to be a star since he was a little boy, and he’s not a believer in self-doubt. His only stage experience was in a trio of high school musicals. The truth was, Frost hadn’t revisited the material since he was 16. Now an embryonic Broadway musical about Michael Jackson had lost its star, and Frost’s new acting coach, who had stumbled across the video on YouTube, wanted to know: Could the 21-year-old still sing and dance like the King of Pop?
Five years earlier, he had performed “Billie Jean” at a high school talent show, and his mom had filmed the performance on her iPad. Myles Frost was a college junior in Maryland, studying audio engineering, when he got the call that would change his life.
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