She Was *Not* Going To Play Princess Jasmine: Shereen Ahmed, First Arab-American To Play Eliza Doolittle In Major Production

“I don’t want to be Jasmine. She’s one of my favorite princesses, but I don’t want to perpetuate that stereotype: completely powerless, or overly sexualized,” says the Baltimore-born daughter of an Egyptian immigrant father. After understudying Laura Benanti on Broadway (she went on a dozen times), Ahmed is headlining the national tour, currently at the Kennedy Center. – The Washington Post