(Photo credit: The Cre8sian Project)
Lainie Sakakura is more than just the current reigning Mrs. Claus.
The Broadway veteran, director, choreographer, librettist, producer waved to crowds last year as Mrs. Claus during the 2025 Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. But the woman behind the mystical Christmas character has experienced the exceptional highs and the absolute horrors of American life as a woman of color, such as her family’s history as part of the Japanese American population who were placed in internment camps in the 1940s.
“My father was imprisoned in the Japanese internment camps for three years,” she said to Just Add Color late January over Zoom. “They’re concentration camps. We [America] called them internment camps to make it more palatable for society, but they were concentration camps.”
Sakakura explained that her father and eight of his family members were sent to the camps, which led to generational trauma. Her grandmother, she said, died in her forties “because of the mistreatment and lack of medical care.”
“Americans don’t talk about the people who have died or the PTSD Japanese Americans suffered,” she continued. “There was a lot propaganda to make it [palatable]. They called it ‘camps’ but it wasn’t a summer camp…our whole family lost their livelihood. My grandfather…immigrated over here when he was a young man and worked his way up to upper-middle class in San Francisco. On his release, he lost everything.”
Instead of going back to his upper-middle class life, Sakakura’s grandfather had to work as a house boy and his family had to live in other people’s homes, “cleaning and cooking…until the end of his life” at 94 years old.
“My grandparents were here legally,” she said, adding that it’s hard to watch history repeating itself with citizens being harassed and imprisoned by ICE.
The concept of eternal foreignness, she said, is something that America should address, especially since “it’s not just white people that come after us.”
“That, I think, is the most hurtful part,” she said. “I wish that all of us could come together.”
“Closing that iconic loop”
The Mrs. Claus character seems to be one of the ways Macy’s wants to make that dream happen. For the past three years, the company has hired actresses of color, including Sheryl Lee Ralph and Liza Colón-Zayas, to portray the character. Sakakura said she was approached for the job by Eric Quang Gelb. Gelb, co-producer of theatre shows including Little Shop of Horrors and Head Over Heels, also serves as the creative director of musicals, live branded entertainment and theater for young audiences (TYA) and Macy’s creative producing specialist for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.
Gelb wrote on social media in November that he wanted to find a way to honor Asian Americans in the parade, and Sakakura was perfect for the role.
“She is a mentor from afar – a creative director, who, like me, demands excellence. She literally paved the way for directors like me. 30 years later, I was insistent on closing that iconic loop,” he wrote. “Though Lainie wasn’t there to see it, I know she would be proud of a historic first. Rockettes kicked, and revealed up on Santa’s Sleigh was Mrs. Claus – but this year, she was a stunning example of ASIAN EXCELLENCE!”
Sakakura added that she thinks that Gelb not only wanted to honor Asian American culture, but also wanted to cast someone who was intrinsic to New York theater life.
“I think that in general, it was the idea of having someone who was important in some ways of just being a part of New York, a part of Broadway, a part of our theater community, but not necessarily a celebrity. Just as a significant Asian community member who has made their way,” she said. “I think for him, me…working here for 30 years and me being the second Asian Rockette, having Rockettes of Color Alumnae, is…quietly significant? I don’t know if that’s a term or [what] I use to call myself. But a Broadway, blue collar [type], someone who’s hardworking, works in our industry, not someone who has a million followers or anything. Just someone who’s been existing. And so I think for him, that was really special, [and] also for me, to be able to do something like that.”
Sakakura joined the Rockettes in 1994, becoming the second-ever Asian Rockette in the NYC company. She said when she auditioned, she was already working professionally in Broadway and didn’t realize she was on the verge of continuing the historic legacy of the first Asian Rockette, Setsuko Maruhashi. Maruhashi, who made history in 1985, welcomed Sakakura into the fold herself.
“On the first day of rehearsal, I was standing in this giant studio [at Radio City] and across the room, this Asian American woman walks toward me. She stops in front of me and says, ‘Hello, I am Setsuko Maruhashi. I am the first Asian Rockette. You are the second. I have been waiting 10 years for you,” she said. “That’s when I knew the responsibility I was shouldering.”
“She broke the color line 45 years ago. I love that we are celebrating the hundred year anniversary of the Rockettes, but people are not talking about our 45 year anniversary of breaking the color line, and the person who broke the color line was Japanese,” she added. “Jennifer Jones was the first Black Rockette 1987 two years after Setsuko. And then it took 10 years after Setsuko before they had a second Asian Rockette, and that was me.”
The mixed-bag response
Sakakura’s warm presence during the parade won her many fans, including a young girl who was playing an elf in the parade. Sakakura said the girl didn’t notice her race — what she wanted to know was if Mrs. Claus had cookies like Santa and if she got to help pass out presents.
“She did not wonder for a second if I was the real Mrs. Claus,” she said.
However, for every fan who loved seeing Sakakura as Mrs. Claus, there were those online ready to tear her down. She said she didn’t think her playing the role would be “such a big deal,” but for racist trolls, it was. One person, she said, made a “pretty hateful reel on Instagram,” which got over a million views and over 10,000 “hateful comments agreeing” with what the man was spewing in his video.
“The things that they were saying [were] degrading, racist, awful things,” she said. “They were saying it just so openly and blatantly on the internet publicly. I mean, there’s a profile, so you have to own up to what you’re saying, you know? I think that was really surprising.”
While she did see other videos on social media supportive of her turn as Mrs. Claus, Sakakura admitted that the hate “did overwhelm me for a few days,” adding that it brought back a lot of her childhood trauma of having racist things said directly to her growing up.
“[W]hen I was a child, that was really normal, the things that I would hear or rocks being thrown at me and things like that,” she said. “As an adult, I haven’t felt that as common. …So I think I was really surprised that our culture in America today, that it was quite so blatant. The racism’s always there. But that kind of really, outright, blatant, shameless [reaction] was shocking.”
Making diversity a necessity, not a trend
The racist vitriol online reflects where America is today. Currently, the country is in a xenophobic, ultra-conservative swing. This isn’t foreign to America, but the country also goes through periods of time when it tries to take big leaps forward. Sakakura’s time with the Rockettes came about when the entertainment industry was in one of those positive leaps.
“1994 was when I was cast in the Broadway company of Carousel, which is where Audra McDonald made her Broadway debut. That cast was super diverse and it was really groundbreaking at Lincoln Center. That catapulted Audra’s career, and a lot of other people as well,” said Sakakura. “…when I did The King and I on Broadway in 1996 with Lou Diamond Phillips, Donna Murphy and Paolo Montalban–he was in the ensemble with me when he was cast as the Prince in Cinderella with Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg, it was mind-blowing, right? And for those of us that were around during that time period, or even now…it’s like ‘Oh my God!’ I still haven’t seen casting like that to this day. So in the mid-’90s, we thought everything was starting to change.”
“At the time, I was also working with a director-choreographer-writer David Bell who also cast that way as well. When questioned about his diverse casting, he said, ‘Maybe in the beginning the audience might notice you have a Black mother, a white father, an Asian son, but after two minutes they forget about it. They’re not going to think about it anymore.’ I was excited thinking, ‘OK, our industry is really changing.’ … sadly all that movement forward disappeared again.”
America has treated diversity as a trend more often than not. But as more people of color find footholds in the industry, diversity is becoming more of a necessity, even during hard times like right now.
Sakakura, for one, is doing her part to make sure that diversity isn’t treated as a trend. Apart from her work as an educator and speaker, she is currently choreographing the upcoming revival of Flower Drum Song for 60th anniversary of the East West Players, the country’s largest and oldest Asian theater company. David Henry Huang, who wrote the 2002 revival book, returns as the writer for this production, with Lily Tung Crystal as director. The main cast includes Grace Yoo, Marc Oka, Emily Kuroda, Scott Keiji Takeda, Gedde Watanabe, Krista Marie Yu, Kenton Chen and Cooper Bennett. The production opens to the public April 16 in Los Angeles.
“This will be the first time a major production is being directed and choreographed by Asian women,” she said. “…And the whole creative team is also Asian.”
Sakakura is also serving as librettist on the musical adaptation of Jamie Ford’s novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, with music and lyrics by Paul Fujimoto. The story revolves around a Chinese American boy and Japanese American girl who attend an all-white school in the 1940s. The two students, who were taught to hate each other because of past history between the Chinese and Japanese, start learning from each other and break down the walls of hate. The boy’s best friend, a Black boy who is also a jazz musician, serves as a big brother figure and helps him with journey.
The production has already held a 2019 industry reading presented by the 5th Avenue Theatre, Abindgon Theatre Company and Ann Ramsay-Jenkins. The industry reading cast included Jane Bernard, Darius de Haas, Carly Gendell, Rick Faugno, Kenny Ingram, Sala Iwamatsu, Spencer Jones, Kathleen Kwan, Darren Lee, Jonny Lee Jr., Fenton Li, Jason Ma, Zach Mackiewicz, Mary Beth Purdy, Alex Sanchez, Avelina Sanchez, Isabela Sanchez, Ian Saraceni, Virginia Woodruff and Timothy Yang.
Sakakura said that the next iteration of the adaptation is as a benefit concert May 23 in Seattle.
“What’s really interesting about that is we’re going to try something new,” she said. “…We’re gonna present one act of our musical, but we’re also trying to bring together the Japanese American community, the Chinese American community, the Black community. We’re presenting at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center and bringing in local artists [and] local people to support us and see what we’ve been experimenting with. …Our hope is to prove that we can create a musical, have it supported by our own communities so that we can protect our stories and we can do it well enough that we can get it up to a higher commercial level so that it can be competitive with the white dollars.”
“Lead with love”
Living in America as a person of color is hard. Living as an artist and creative of color increases those challenges. But Sakakura’s advice is “to just keep showing up.”
“Instead of trying to calculate if you have a good chance of getting something or getting in that door, or getting into that room, [don’t] even think about it. Just focus on showing up and being great,” she said. “I think the hardest part is that we can’t afford to have flaws in the same way that maybe the majority can. So when you’re younger, focus on your skill, focus on being the best. Focus on being on time. Focus on bringing excellence into the room.”
“I want our young people to keep showing up,” she added. “Even if you’re not invited, you show up and then when you get older, when you get a little more power, when you get more status, start thinking more about ‘What can I do for others now? What can I do with the little bit of platform I have now?’ As you move forward just remember you’re always carrying your community with you. And remember that a win for one is a win for all. So when you speak up, think about it as speaking up for the others behind you. Usually when you speak up for your community, you’re usually gonna take the hit and be okay with that because you’re taking care of your community.”
“If we all work with generosity and with love, and we lead with that, I don’t think we’ll ever lose. I think we’ll always just come closer and closer together. …Be brave, show up, lead with love.”
This interview has been condensed for clarity.