Rebecca Naomi Jones

Rebecca Naomi Jones (born March 31, 1981) is an American actress and singer from New York City whose Broadway career spans from 2008 to 2024. The daughter of a musician father and a photographer mother — her father African-American and her mother Jewish — Jones grew up in New York and performed in the children's chorus of the Metropolitan Opera at a young age. She graduated from the Berkeley Carroll School in 1999 and went on to earn a BFA in drama from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Before reaching Broadway, she appeared in national tours of Rent and Caroline, or Change.

Jones made her Off-Broadway debut in 2007 in Passing Strange, a production that transferred to Broadway on February 28, 2008. Two years later, she originated the role of Whatsername in the Green Day rock opera American Idiot, which opened on Broadway on April 20, 2010. In 2012, she took on the role of the Narrator in Manhattan Theatre Club's Off-Broadway production of Murder Ballad, earning a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress. The show returned for an engagement at the Union Square Theatre running from May 22 to July 21, 2013, and Jones reprised her role for that run. That same summer, she appeared as Jaquenetta in a musical adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

On June 2, 2014, Jones received a Lilly Award, a prize honoring women in the theater. The following year, on April 14, 2015, she joined the Broadway cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, replacing Lena Hall in the role of Yitzhak and remaining with the production through its closing on September 13, 2015. In 2017, she starred as Vanessa in Significant Other on Broadway.

Jones starred as Laurey Williams in Daniel Fish's production of Oklahoma!, first at St. Ann's Warehouse in 2018, becoming the first woman of color to play the role of Laurey when the production transferred to Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre in March 2019. That performance earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. She also appeared in Shakespeare in the Park's adaptation of As You Like It in New York City. Her Broadway credits additionally include Stereophonic. In September 2025, Jones took over the role of Persephone in the musical Hadestown on Broadway.