Ariana DeBose knows exactly what it feels like to come in last.

Long before the Oscar, before the Tony nomination, before Steven Spielberg dialed her up personally, DeBose was a kid on So You Think You Can Dance — eliminated in the very first week. It's the kind of early "no" that sends most people quietly back to real life. Instead, DeBose used it as a compass. "I knew I was good," she says on the Joy 101 podcast. "This just wasn't my room."

That phrase — this isn't your room — has become the quiet philosophy behind one of the most improbable rises in modern entertainment. The woman who danced since she was three, raised by a single mother who taught in public schools, would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her turn as Anita in Spielberg's West Side Story, making history in the process. Not bad for someone the judges cut on day one.

The Spielberg call — at a nail salon

The most cinematic moment of the conversation is decidedly un-cinematic in setting. When Steven Spielberg called to offer her Anita — the role Rita Moreno made iconic — DeBose was mid-manicure, squeezed between shows of the Donna Summer musical, trying to fix her "ratty" nails before a front-row patron judged them again.

What she remembers most isn't the terror (though there was plenty). It's the phrasing. "He asked me to do it," she says, still moved. "As opposed to telling me I was going to be it." That small act of respect from one of cinema's most powerful directors told her everything about the room she was walking into. She said yes.

The wake-up call in Greece

If the Oscar was the summit, DeBose is refreshingly candid that the air up there is thin. She recently took her first-ever solo vacation — Athens, at 34 — and the trip doubled as a reckoning. As stardom grows, she explains, teams grow: more people doing more things on your behalf. "In theory really great," she says. "But I can be fully honest — it kind of made me a little lazy." The fix wasn't a spa day. It was forcing herself to order "the special" alone in a Greek restaurant, make eye contact, and remember she's "capable of doing things on my own."

That's the throughline she keeps returning to: being an active participant in your own life, not a passenger in a career other people are steering.

The cost of winning

DeBose doesn't romanticize the Oscar. In one of the interview's most honest turns, she admits the win "shows you where your foundations are not so solid." Euphoria invited opinion; some relationships shifted; some people grew uncomfortable with her success. A self-professed "loyalist," she had to learn a hard adult lesson — that you can "cut cords lovingly." She also pushed back on an industry that, post-Oscar, tried to hand her "limiting parts" built around her identity rather than her range. "What's the fun of being an actor," she asks, "if I'm playing parts that are just basically me?"

Living her American dream — five nights at the Carlyle

Which brings her to now. DeBose is bringing a jazz trio, led by music director Mark G. Meadows, to Café Carlyle — the storied New York room where everyone from Sinatra on down has played — for a five-night run, September 29 through October 3. For DeBose, it's not just a gig; it's the destination she pictured for herself back when the dream was smaller. "Part of my American dream was playing a place like the Carlyle," she says. "I had no idea I'd have an undercut."

And there's more cooking: she stars alongside Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis in the Prime Video thriller Scarpetta, a "cute little family trio of women" (Curtis plays her mother). Fittingly, her bond with Curtis began the night DeBose handed her an Oscar — a full-circle moment for a woman who has spent her whole life proving that the last dancer standing on one stage can become the first name called on a much bigger one.

Asked what brings her joy now, the Oscar winner doesn't reach for the trophies. "The little things," she says. "Every day that I get to wake up and open my eyes and take five breaths."

Theresa Lucas