Jordan Fisher is Proud To Be The First POC To Play Rent's Mark Cohen

When Jordan Fisher makes his debut as Mark Cohen in tonight’s Rent: Live, he’ll be the first person of color to do so.

The 24-year-old actor opened up about how proud he is to be the first.

“I know people of color who are Jewish. I know people of color who were born into privilege,” Jordan shared with USA Today. “Beyond that, just the melanin in my skin, I loved the idea of playing somebody I felt very close to.”

He adds, “I was kind of always the kid that was supposed to be somewhere else. And that is Mark, the outsider looking in but living in the nucleus of all of us.”

Jordan also opened up to THR about becoming the narrator for the important story: “The essence of Mark for me is, as the narrator of the story, to allow America [and] anybody that’s watching the show to go on this journey with him through his eyes, through the lens of his camera, and to see what he really deals with.”

Mark, in Rent: Live, is “a little more tortured” than his previous incarnations.

“My Mark is a bit more of a caretaker than we’ve seen in the past, somebody that is really the glue that just tries his best to hold everybody together,” Jordan says, which stems from “his innate yearning for a community and sense of family.”

Rent: Live premieres TONIGHT @ 8PM ET/PT on Fox.