Noah J. Ricketts Brings the Bluegrass to Hollywood and Broadway

Louisville native, Noah J. Ricketts credits his Kentucky upbringing for success

This story is part of ISSUE 05: Reimagining Masculinity. The magazine is available for purchase here.

I met Noah Ricketts through MySpace when that was one of the only ways to meet other queer kids. We were both young gay boys navigating life in Kentucky the best we could. We weren’t besties and didn’t know each other that well, but for me at least, just knowing that another gay kid existed in the same city as me was enough to make me feel the small sense of community I craved. Throughout the years we followed each other’s digital lives with occasional DMs of, “Congratulations!” after a professional triumph and some double tap likes here and there. I don’t think we ever thought we’d be sitting together in a hotel lobby in the East Village of New York City in our 30s to discuss his blossoming entertainment career.

Of all the Kentuckians who made it to the big and small screens, very few have been part of the LGBTQ+ community, much less challenge masculine ideals set forth by Hollywood and become a visible representation of Black queer men in the South — until now. 

Noah J. Ricketts, Louisville, masterfully donned 1950s drag and 1980s swag as Frankie Hines in the Showtime political romance miniseries, Fellow Travelers. The show follows a group of men, led by Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, through the Lavender Scare, the Vietnam War, and the AIDS Crisis. 

In the show, Ricketts plays a drag queen performing in an underground queer nightclub in Washington D.C. as he navigates his place within the intersections of Blackness and queerness, all while falling in love with a man, played by Jelani Alladin, who’s also struggling to find his own place in the world. Finding Frankie, he explains, proved to be a cathartic experience. 

“I remember them shuffling me into a dress and leading me down this hallway and all of a sudden, the sea just parted,” Ricketts recalls of his first day on set. “Everyone stares and looks at me. And I’m like, ‘Oh God, what happened? What did I do?’ And then I realize, ‘Oh, they’re staring at me because of how fabulous I look.’” 

It was a defining moment for Ricketts. “You can hear a pin drop in that whole place,” he continues. “In that moment, I realized the power of drag.” 

Queer shows like Fellow Travelers didn’t exist when Ricketts was growing up in the Fern Creek area of Louisville, where he attended DuPont Manual High School (Youth Performing Art School). Now, he hopes it will “help queer content get off the ground” not only in Hollywood, but across the nation. 

As a YPAS student, Ricketts bebopped around one of the more artistic and queer neighborhoods in Louisville — the Highlands. Now residing in the West Village neighborhood of New York City, he recalls the “rowdy girls” he got into trouble with in his teen years. 

“We would go to my friend’s house and sing on her mom’s karaoke machine,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve had many a night in Walmart parking lots, bonfires and in Waffle House.”

In a 2000s era Kentucky, queer teens didn’t have many outlets for connection with others like them. Ricketts says he didn’t have a lot of queer friends growing up, but like many young gaybys, he was flush with wild straight girls.

“Those are my girls, my ride or dies that I would, depend on and hang out with and console me. I really appreciated them,” he says. “They were open and accepting of who I was at that time, even though I was figuring it out.”

One of the shared experiences amongst young gay boys in the Bluegrass is being forced into sports that they don’t want to play. Ricketts wound up playing soccer, though serendipity allowed his sports career to be cut short. 

“I broke my arm a couple of weeks before I was supposed to go to soccer camp,” he explains. “They don’t allow injured children into sports at the YMCA, so I got shuffled off to the only place in Louisville that would take me, which was this musical theater summer camp called Broadway Bootcamp.”

The snafu ended up being the catalyst to his life and career as an entertainer. 

Broadway Bootcamp was a game-changer. It was the first time he was surrounded by people who were acting, singing, and dancing — a world he’d never before experienced before. He became obsessed with theater and would stay up late watching any Tony Award performances on YouTube he could find. 

“I was reading plays, going to dance lessons, voice lessons — anything I could do to get my hands on art,” he says of those days. But there was a limit to his dreams. 

Ricketts knew that Kentucky wasn’t necessarily the place he needed to grow as a queer performer, so he took a risk and dropped out of YPAS to uproot his life for Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. After he graduated from the arts boarding school, he jumped right back to the Ohio River Valley at the University of Cincinnati’s prestigious musical theater program. Four intense years there led him directly to auditions on Broadway in New York City.

“It was pretty crazy because as a person studying musical theater for so long, to finally be thrown into the world and be auditioning for proper shows was such a surreal experience,” Ricketts says. 

The hard work paid off. Soon after landing in the Big Apple, Ricketts starred on Broadway as Drifter in Beautiful, The Carole King Musical and Kristoff in Frozen as well as shows like Dreamgirls, Hello, Dolly!, Tarzan and La Cage aux Folles. This Spring, he’s set to star in The Great Gatsby as Nick Carraway, alongside Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada.

Frozen is also where Ricketts met his Fellow Travelers’ costar, Jelani Alladin, who plays Frankie Hines’ love interest, Marcus Hooks. The two were “partners in crime” on set and barely got through a take without laughing.

“Noah is the truest personification of a gem, he is the result of hard work and explosive talent, existing simultaneously in a vessel filled with compassion, empathy, and game,” Aladdin, said. “I can’t wait to witness what great works he will continue to give this world.”

It was his starring role in Frozen that gave Ricketts pause, knowing that he broke new ground playing a Black Disney Prince. Even now, it makes him emotional. 

“I didn’t realize how important that moment was until I reflect on it now,” he says. “I remember having all these young Black boys waiting for me after the show and at first I was like, ‘Oh, this is a mistake’ or ‘They must be waiting for someone else.’ And then I realized, ‘Oh, no, they came all this way to see me.’ I realized for the first time in my life, I was making change and using my art for good.” 

The moment made him realize “how powerful” art can be, particularly to queer Black kids. “At that moment, I decided, this is what this is, [this is] what this is all about.” 

Ricketts holds the same adoration for Fellow Travelers, which in essence is a visual history of the traumatic realities of the AIDS crisis. As he points out, queer people are taking notice of the message the show is putting out. 

“I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people in the older gay community, just saying thank you, because I feel like they’ve just been seen for the first time in decades and now I’m getting messages from the younger community,” he says. “They’re DMing me on Instagram or responding to TikToks. I love it.”

As Ricketts heads back to Broadway, the rest of the world can expect more groundbreaking projects from him — as well as some grassroots community work — in the coming years. 

Recently, he’s been working with Louisville native filmmaker, Imani N. Dennison, on a project detailing the life of a famous Black jockey, Issac Burns Murphy. Ricketts and Dennison want to make the film in Louisville and involve the community during its production. He is also working to reestablish the very same Broadway Bootcamp that took him in as a young teen and ignited his love for art and music. It’s certainly a full circle moment. 

“My accessibility to the arts as a young person is why I am here today,” he says. “I’d like to continue that pipeline from Louisville to Broadway [by bringing] in New York’s best talents to the bluegrass state. It’s a win-win for everyone.”