Playing the role of Diana Ross and other Motown singers in the Broadway show “Ain’t Too Proud” six nights a week, Ta’Nika Gibson cuts a glamorous figure.
But she had a horrific childhood: demeaned, beaten and starved by her adoptive mother.
“She used to hit me with telephone cords, curling-iron cords, pots, pans and switches from trees,” the 28-year-old told The Post. “I would be covered in welts and bruises.”
Ta’Nika was born a ward of the state in 1991 in Springfield, Mass., as her schizophrenic biological mom was under the protection of the courts. The girl bounced around foster homes and was eventually taken in by a woman who had five children of her own as well as four other foster kids.
It was hardly one big happy family, however. Ta’Nika still has a scar where a bowl of boiling food “accidentally” landed on her leg when she about 4 years old. She believes her foster mother had taken her and the others in for one reason: “She received [government] checks for us,” said Ta’Nika.
It didn’t get any better when, at age 5, she was adopted by the woman. “Mother would put locks on the kitchen cabinets so we couldn’t get food,” Ta’Nika recalled. “We were starving, panhandling for things to eat outside the local store, even shoplifting.”
The woman’s five biological children, she said, were well-fed, spoiled and rarely did chores. Meanwhile, the adoptees were forced to sleep in a freezing cold pantry after their mother claimed she had spotted a cockroach because they hadn’t swept it properly. “I spent the night in a plastic bag,” Ta’Nika recalled.
Eager to change her lot in life, Ta’Nika became a straight-A student. “I didn’t belong in that family and I was determined not to be like them,” she said. “I did every extra-curricular activity possible.”
But that sometimes made things worse. When the girl was 8, her mother took the restaurant vouchers Ta’Nika had won in a talent contest. “She said: ‘You think you’re such a know-all so I’m going to take the whole family out to dinner with your prize and you’re going to stay behind,’ ” Ta’Nika recalled. “I was angry, and she beat me with a cord.”
Things began to turn around in eighth grade, when a teacher helped her get a scholarship at a nearby private school. She was elected student-body vice-president and played “the lead in every show,” even as the chaos continued at home.
Then, in 2008, her adopted mother died of breast cancer. (Her biological mother is also deceased.) Ta’Nika, 17, was to be put into foster care in a different town — meaning she would have to change schools.
“I was crushed,” she recalled. “I felt so sad and alone, [with] nobody to advocate for me.”
To her astonishment, the school’s principal, Kathryn Gibson, and her husband, David, who had two children of their own, offered the teen a home. “For the first time in my entire life, I slept alone in my own bed,” said Ta’Nika.
David, a music professor, helped her dream of becoming a singer by driving her to voice lessons. It paid off when Ta’Nika graduated from New York University in 2013 before studying opera at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester.
The Gibsons formally adopted her when she was 22, celebrating the occasion with a big party.
“They gave me presents as if I’d been with them my whole life,” Ta’Nika said. “A baby doll you’d maybe present to a 1- or 2-year-old, then a Barbie doll, a CD player and some skates. They were things that I would never use today but I’ll always have as keepsakes.”
Ta’Nika got her big break in 2018, making her stage debut in a New York City Center revival of “Me and My Girl.” She landed the parts in “Ain’t Too Proud” — about the Temptations — in September.
She’s also involved with the charity You Gotta Believe, which helps find adoptive parents for pre-teens and teens before they age out of the foster-care system. Last month, she performed at You Gotta Believe’s Voices for the Voiceless event in Manhattan, where she was supported by her parents.
“I had a happy ending,” Ta’Nika said. “I want other kids to realize they can come out the other side”
Photos: Tamara Beckwith/NY Post; Stylist: Haley Wells; Hair: T. Cooper using ECRU NY; Makeup: Alberto Luengo; Location: 95 Greene Street, Unit PHABE (Compass for buying information)