LaGuardia Alum and Broadway Sensation Kyle Jean-Baptiste, Actor in ‘Les Misérables,’ Dies at 21
Kyle Jean-Baptiste, the first African-American actor to play the lead role of Jean Valjean in the popular Broadway musical “Les Misérables,” died on Friday after falling from a fire escape in Brooklyn. He was 21.
The police said that Mr. Jean-Baptiste fell from the fourth-floor fire escape of an apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and that his death “appeared to be accidental.”
Mr. Jean-Baptiste was an ensemble performer and an understudy for the role of Valjean, said Marc Thibodeau, a spokesman for the production. In addition to being the first African-American actor to play the role, he was the youngest.
Mr. Jean-Baptiste was sitting on the fire escape with a 23-year-old female friend, the police said, when he stood up, slipped and fell backward to the street below.
The Tony Award winners Audra McDonald and Kristin Chenoweth sent Twitter messages offering their condolences to Mr. Jean-Baptiste’s family and the musical’s cast. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and star of the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” wrote on Twitter: “Unimaginable. In shock. He was just in here.”
Mr. Miranda also shared a link to a YouTube video of him and Mr. Jean-Baptiste performing a number from “Les Misérables” two weeks ago on the sidewalk in front of the Richard Rodgers Theater on 46th Street, where “Hamilton” is currently playing.
“The tragic loss of Kyle to our company, just as he was on the threshold of a brilliant career, is a numbing reminder of how precious life is,” Cameron Mackintosh, the producer of “Les Misérables,” said in a statement.
Ramin Karimloo, who plays Valjean in the current production, described Mr. Jean-Baptiste as a charismatic and talented performer with “a zest for life and the industry.” “He had a lot of ambition and the confidence to achieve those ambitions,” Mr. Karimloo said. “When I heard him sing, his voice was ridiculous for a guy his age.”
Mr. Jean-Baptiste was born in New York City on Dec. 3, 1993, and graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan and Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio. He apeared in several regional theater productions in Cleveland and played Enjolras last year in a production of “Les Misérables” at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival.
He joined the company of “Les Misérables” on June 23 and played smaller roles before first appearing on July 23 as Valjean, the musical’s protagonist, a poor man who is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and pursued for years by a relentless police inspector. The day after his first performance in the role, Mr. Jean-Baptiste wrote on Twitter that it had been “one of the best nights of my life.”
The current production of “Les Misérables” is the show’s second Broadway revival. The original production, which opened in 1987 and closed in 2003, won eight Tony Awards, including best musical. The show was revived in 2006 and again in 2014. A movie version, with Hugh Jackman as Valjean, was released in 2012 and won three Oscars.
Mr. Jean-Baptiste appeared as Valjean several times before his final performance on Thursday evening, Mr. Thibodeau said. He was scheduled to leave the show on Sept. 6 to join the new Broadway production of “The Color Purple.”
In a message posted to Twitter on Tuesday morning, Mr. Jean-Baptiste wrote:
“Thursday is my last Valjean on Broadway. The ability to play this part on Broadway has been life changing.”
We send condolences to his Family and Friends and also to his greater Alumnus at Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music and The Arts!
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