Silver Spring, MD - Dancer, actress, singer, producer, choreographer and businesswoman Debbie Allen offers host Cathy Hughes a revealing glimpse into the key to her extraordinary success and what's next on the horizon in a TV One on One interview premiering Friday, July 28 at 8 PM (ET).

Allen credits much of her success to her upbringing by accomplished yet nurturing parents, who encouraged her and her siblings, including sister Phylicia Rashad, to be creative, independent and willing to work hard to achieve goals. Her mother, Vivian Ayers, was an accomplished poet, pianist and painter, in addition to being a librarian at Rice University, and her father was a dentist who loved the arts.

"Momma was always - always about books with us," Allen said. "Books were a big part of our lives, and poetry and music. And she identified in each one of us what we might aspire to, and she pushed us in that direction."

She graduated from Howard University, after being denied admission at the North Carolina School of Art because she was told she had the wrong "body type." After college, she quickly became a success on Broadway, including a Tony-nominated role in West Side Story. But she credits her role in the TV series, Fame, as her biggest breakthrough.

"But I think what really took me to the world of dance was Fame, because when I did the television series, I came into that show as the choreographer and playing Lydia Grant, knowing I wasn't going to really be the star of the show...", Allen tells Hughes. "I just wanted to do the choreography. And then it all changed because I could really sing, and I could really dance. And then I had this gang of fantastic young people that I brought [into the series]" including Gene Anthony Ray and Jasmine Guy.

While at Howard, she came across the story of The Amistad, and became passionately committed to seeing the true story of the slave revolt made into a film. It took 18 years before the film was produced, in Allen's collaboration with Stephen Spielberg.

"I felt it had to be told, and I believed that it would make a great movie, and I believed that it also would pay tribute to the black men in America," Allen says. "My whole family fought for this country - and yet, every time I would see a movie, I'd see black people trembling in a corner, crying, 'Don't wanna get the bullet.' You know, we took a lot of bullets. We helped build this country, and I wanted to honor the black men in my family and in this country."

The director talks about some of her latest projects, The Fantasia Barrino Story, in which the inspiring American Idol winner plays herself; and Tournament of Dreams, where she plays a principal arguing for more arts education.

She tells Hughes that she aspires to do musical films, or stories that "are told through music and dance." These musical films include one called The Legend, an adaptation of Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" that she has written with James Ingram.

Later in the show, Allen is reunited with actress Jasmine Guy, who was one of her students in Fame and who starred in the Allen-produced sitcom, A Different World.

The TV One on One Debbie Allen interview will repeat on Sunday, July 30 at 5PM, and Tuesday August 1 at 1PM (all times ET).

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