Broadway's Christiani Pitts On Being Fearless In 'Two Strangers'

Christiani Pitts is putting vulnerability on full display through the hit, two-person Broadway show, Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York).

The only completely original musical on Broadway this season, the show stars Pitts as Robin, the no-nonsense sister to the bride set to marry the estranged father of Sam Tutty’s character, Dougal, an optimistic Brit who has traveled to the Big Apple for the wedding of the father he’s never met.

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“It’s very exposing, because we don’t get much time off stage to recalibrate ourselves, physically, or emotionally. It’s extremely exposing in that way,” Pitts told MadameNoire via Zoom during a break between shows. “But I think, from an audience perspective, you start to care about these people very early on, because there’s no distraction of other people from the world. They’re able to go with us on the journey and have love and support for us that you may miss in bigger shows. To that end, it’s so scary, because if they choose not to support or love you, we’ve got a long road, long journey ahead.”

From her Broadway debut in 2017, by way of A Bronx Tale, to her making history as the first Black woman to portray Ann Darrow for her role in King Kong during the 2018-2019 season, Pitts is living out her wildest dreams.

No stranger to paving the way for others, the 2026 Drama League Award nominee is also the only Black woman eligible for a Tony nomination for “Best Lead Actress in a Musical” for her portrayal of Robin.

“I now have so much more knowledge of the business of show, whereas this is my childhood dream manifested. When I made my Broadway debut, I had no concept of the business. I had never made that much money in my life. I had never had access to people I looked up to, it was just so overwhelming for me,” Pitts recalled. “I wasn’t thinking about it as a business. I was just thinking about it as like dreams, dreams, dreams, whereas now I’m trying to remind myself that this is the dream, because I have so much more experience now that my mind goes straight to business, and I’m a mom now as well. My responsibilities are just very intense. I find myself on the heavy days, looking around and being like, ‘Girl, this is you living the dream.’ Like, check in with 10-year-old and 8-year-old Christiani, who was trying to be Broadway back then. So yeah, it’s like now, I have to kind of check back in with that Broadway debut version of myself.”

When she steps onto the stage as Robin, however, Pitts’ gets to lean in to playing a Black woman who doesn’t have to wear a mask, and instead shows up as her full self with every scene, grounding and guiding the action through this new connection to Tutty’s Dougal who is described as a character who “charmingly bounds around the stage like a golden retriever.”

“Girl, it’s so scary,” she declared. “I’m not gonna lie, because she’s not hiding and she’s not putting on a mask, I personally have a fear that the audience is not going to root for her, or that they’re going to judge her, and I found that to be the complete opposite.”

Pitts added, “I found people to really relate to her, and I found when I speak with Black women at the stage door, the refreshing notion of like, ‘That is my home girl. I know her very well, or I am her.’ And it just feels very cathartic to see yourself on stage, not pretending to be anything, but who you are in that moment. It is very uncomfortable to go out there and just completely exist in a place because she’s in an in-between. She’s not in a great place.”

Being someone who has stood on the shoulders of those before her and will offer the same to the next generation of Black women on Broadway is what Pitts calls a “great responsibility.”

“It feels so good,” she expressed. “And the good thing about it is it helps me with being intentional, because I know that is what I care about deeply, and I know how important it is. It helps quiet a lot of the noise, because I know exactly what I’m here to do, and I know exactly who I’m doing this for. It is such a responsibility, and I don’t take it lightly. God and the universe keeps showing up in ways where it’s like the winks of like, see, this is why you’re doing it!”

“Going from looking up to Patina [Miller], now, we’re in a show together. We’re in two shows together. We’re on a cartoon together. We’re in Raising Cane together, and I get to watch this Black woman continue to elevate, change the game, and now, I’m right there with her,” she continued. “I know there are young girls who are looking at me, who I’m actively ready to pull up with and talk to. And there’s going to come a time when we’re sharing space, and there’s a level of sisterhood. I love it.”

Since Pitts alluded to connecting back in with the 8-year-old version of herself before hitting the stage, and sometimes forgetting that this is the dream personified, it was only right that MadameNoire had her speak to her inner child ahead of her last show for the day.

“I would tell her that you, just you, how you are, how you look right now, is perfectly fine to be who you want to be, and do not waste your time trying to be what other people want you to be, just lock in on who you are because it is enough,” Pitts concluded, getting a bit emotional. “That’s an exercise that I struggle to do because it’s so emotional to talk to your younger self.”

Two Strangers is currently running on Broadway.

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