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It’s been two years since Marisha Wallace surprised her mother, Rowshell Wallace, with a new home in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The West End star toured the property via FaceTime, completed the paperwork remotely and flew back to her hometown to seal the deal, wrapping the house in a red bow before her mom’s arrival.
“She just was so shocked,” the actress, 40, exclusively tells BroadwayWorld. “She had to sit down, and she burst into tears.”
It’s been a lifelong dream for Marisha — one she didn’t even know she had for so long. “My mom said when I was 5 that I said, ‘I’m going to get you a house.’ And she was like, ‘We’re in a house. Why would you say you want to get me a house?’” she recalls, explaining that the one they lived in throughout her childhood was “so terrible.”
“I didn’t know we were poor, but we were,” Marisha admits. “My mom just made it feel like we had everything that we needed.”
Marisha grew up in what she says was a “tumultuous” household. “There was domestic violence in our family and a lot of mental health issues,” she says, explaining that the home was also rundown. There were leaks in the bathroom and the floors, she said, made her think that they could cave in.
After her parents divorced, Marisha moved her mother into a one-bedroom apartment, but as rent consistently increased, living there became unsustainable — and Marisha longed for her mom to have a place she could call her own.
The actress made her Broadway debut in the 2014 Disney musical Aladdin, but it wasn’t until she was cast in the West End production of Dreamgirls that her career really began to take off. As Marisha continued to work in London, she started putting away money for a home; however, she says, she was victim of an investment scam — “so I had to start from scratch.”
After being cast in the 23rd season of the British version of Celebrity Big Brother (exiting the house in a double elimination on day 16), she used her earnings from the reality TV show to put towards the purchase.
“Me and my brother were working on it behind her back,” Marisha says, explaining that one day he was “driving down this one road, and he thought, ‘That’s my mama’s house.’”
Marisha recalls her mother working in a factory for years making around $10 an hour. Still, she says, Rowshell “made it so that I could be a cheerleader and do musical theater.”
Gifting her a new home “felt like me giving back to her,” Marisha says. “The funny part was I thought I was giving back just to her, but it gave back to my whole family. Now it’s the center of everything we do. Everyone comes there for Thanksgiving and Christmas and birthdays. And we have chickens out the back.” (They’ve named them all after divas, Marisha says — and their little “Ariana Grande” actually ended up being a rooster!)
Coming back to North Carolina is special, Marisha says, especially given that she’s made a new home for herself in London, where she will soon be playing Bea in Something Rotten! (running from June 16 through July 19 at the Manchester Opera House) — the same show she was in when she left Broadway almost a decade ago after being offered the opportunity to come to the West End.
“I left [New York] with three days’ notice, and I had five days of rehearsal,” she explains. “And then I was starring in a West End show as Effie White in Dreamgirls, just like that.” Though Rowshell “hates flying,” Marisha says, she traveled to the U.K. to see her daughter shine, telling her: “My love for you is stronger than my fear of flying.”
These days, Marisha says her mother is filled with peace. “I’ve never seen my mom this happy in our whole life,” she says. Before giving Rowshell her new home, “all the windows would be shut [where she lived], all the blinds would be closed, it would be dark in the house.”
Now, there is light. “All the windows are open,” Marisha says. “The sun is shining through the house.”
For Marisha, being able to relish in these career and personal milestones with her family has been validating. “Everyone has really connected to this story,” Marisha says, pointing out how some parents will dissuade their children from pursuing a career in the arts. “‘Get a real job’ is what they say.”
This accomplishment “feels like: We can save and make a career — it might take us a little longer, but we’re going to get there. We can get there through hard work and perseverance.”
“The systems that keep Black women impoverished and keep them from buying houses — I was breaking those generational curses. Now, this house is in our family forever, so even when she’s gone, this lives on through her,” Marisha says. “I never had a backup plan, but I don’t want the rest of my family to not have that.”
“You think it’s just a building,” she adds. “But it’s not. It’s so much more.”
