Jordan Fisher Will Play The Kid in Prince's Purple Rain on Broadway

Jordan Fisher will star as The Kid in the new Broadway musical Purple Rain, featuring the music of Prince. Performances begin at the Majestic Theatre on March 12, 2027, ahead of an April 12 opening night.

The Kid is the role Prince himself created in the 1984 Oscar-winning film. That's the comparison every ticket buyer will make, and the production knows it. Fisher is a Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner, which suggests audiences have already decided they like him.

Who is making the show?

The creative team is set:

• Book: Peter Duchan
• Direction: Saheem Ali
• Choreography: Ebony Williams

Ali, in a statement announcing the casting, did not hold back on his leading man. "We know that Jordan Fisher is an extraordinary talent, but what's been thrilling about watching him inhabit The Kid is discovering the fire beneath the surface: the swagger, vulnerability and restless creative spirit we recognize in Prince," Ali said. "Jordan brings all of that to the role, along with an infectious generosity that makes everyone around him better. He's finding something raw, surprising and deeply human in this iconic character and I can't wait for Broadway audiences to experience it."

That's a director selling his star hard. It's also a director naming the exact problem the production must solve: how do you play a figure audiences recognize instantly, without doing an impression? Ali's answer, at least in statement form, is that Fisher locates the person rather than the persona.

Why Fisher?

The résumé makes the case. Fisher most recently appeared off-Broadway in Little Shop of Horrors, a run that kept him in the New York theatre conversation between Main Stem engagements. His Broadway track record is unusually strong for an actor still early in his career: he starred as Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, as Orpheus in Hadestown, and as Evan Hansen in Dear Evan Hansen.

Look at that list. Christian, Orpheus, Evan Hansen — each is a young man defined by longing, performance anxiety or both. The Kid, a brilliant musician fighting to be seen on his own terms, sits squarely in that lineage. Fisher has spent years playing talented young men under pressure; this is the same job with a purple coat of paint and one of pop's most unforgiving benchmarks attached.

There's also the vocal question, and it answers itself. Prince's catalog demands a range most musical theatre leads simply don't carry. Fisher's roles in Hadestown and Moulin Rouge! required sustained, high-wire singing eight shows a week. Casting directors don't hand those parts to actors who can approximate the notes.

What happens next?

The timeline is long. Previews sit more than a year out, on March 12, 2027, with the official opening on April 12 — a four-week preview window at the Majestic, the storied house that long hosted The Phantom of the Opera. Between now and then, the production will face the standard gauntlet: further casting announcements, the inevitable first-listen reactions, and a press cycle that began the moment Fisher's name went out.

One thing is already settled. When the lights come up at the Majestic, the man playing The Kid will be a proven Broadway leading man with three marquee roles behind him, stepping into the part Prince made immortal forty-plus years earlier. Swagger, vulnerability, restless creative spirit — Ali's checklist is now Fisher's homework, and Broadway audiences have until spring 2027 to decide how he did.