Who Is Ben Vereen? Broadway Star Admits To Sexually Harassing Actresses

Several young actresses have come forward to accuse Broadway star Ben Vereen of sexually harassing them back in 2015, when he held auditions for his musical “Hair” at a community theatre in Florida.

The women alleged that the then 69-year-old Vereen, aggressively tried to kiss and hug them on multiple occasions during the auditions. He even stripped naked in front of them on occasion and invited two of the actresses to his Florida house under the pretext of giving them “private rehearsal.”

Vereen admitted to the allegations brought against him. “I would like to apologize directly to the female cast members of the musical ‘Hair’ for my inappropriate conduct when I directed the production in 2015,” he said in a statement to New York Daily News.

"While it was my intention to create an environment that replicated the themes of that musical during the rehearsal process, I have since come to understand that it is my conduct, not my intentions, which are relevant here. So I am not going to make any excuses because the only thing that matters here is acknowledging and apologizing for the effects of my conduct on the lives of these women,” he added.

Vereen was born on Oct. 10, 1946, in Miami, Florida and relocated in his early years to Brooklyn, New York. He had a keen interest in drama, and at the age of 14, he enrolled at the High School of Performing Arts, where he studied under eminent choreographers Martha Graham, George Balanchine, and Jerome Robbins, according to Biography.

His first performance on Broadway was in Bob Fosse's production of “Sweet Charity” in 1967. However, his claim to fame as a Broadway star came in the year 1971, when he embodied the role of Judas Iscariot in Andrew Lloyd Webber's “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Vereen won Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as the leading player in “Pippin,” in 1972.

Vereen stepped into the world of mainstream television in 1977, when he played Chicken George in Alex Haley's landmark TV miniseries “Roots,” for which he received an Emmy nomination. He went on to star in a number of other TV shows such as the detective series “Tenspeed and Brownshoe,” the sitcom “Webster” and the drama “Silk Stalkings.”

The Broadway star faced controversy in 1981, when he performed in blackface at the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, an act that many African-Americans found offensive.

He is married to Nancy Bruner, with whom he had four daughters.

Vereen’s career went downhill after his 16-year-old daughter, Naja, was killed in an automobile accident in 1987. Unable to deal with the personal loss, the actor fell into a deep depression and became addicted to cocaine. He was also critically injured in an automobile accident in 1992, and had to undergo physical rehabilitation for months.

The actresses who accused Vereen of sexual misconduct said that the actor told them at the time that he did not believe that nudity was inherently sexual.

“He gave this whole speech about how nudity was not inherently sexual. ‘That’s not what it’s about.’ He made me feel that if I wasn't mature enough to understand that, I wasn’t mature enough to be in ‘Hair,’” Kaitlyn Terpstra, one of the actresses, said.

“He basically told both of us, ‘Get over yourself. Nudity doesn’t have to be sexual.’ If we asked questions or hesitated, we were the ones making it weird,” Kim, another actresses who asked to be identified only by her first name, added.