Mr. Diggs had just wrapped the current season of “Empire” in Chicago, in which he plays Angelo Dubois, the disgraced politician, jilted lover and frequent punching bag. He had then flown into New York to lead a couple of industry readings for “Thoughts of a Colored Man on a Day When the Sun Set Too Early,” a choreopoem he hopes to direct.

He hadn’t been to Steps in years, but he’d told his publicist that he wanted to walk the halls he used to sweep as a work-study student in the early 1990s, reminiscing about his early days in New York.

Tiptoeing out of the theater class, he met up with Suzy Norton-DiCerto, an assistant managing director at Steps and another former work-study kid. Peering down the main hallway, dancer-strewn and sweat-perfumed, Mr. Diggs recalled that “as a black man with pride, the last thing I wanted to be seen doing was sweeping, so I picked the late-night shift when nobody would see me.” Ms. Norton-DiCerto mentioned that he used to work that late-night shift in “booty shorts.”

“They weren’t called booty shorts then,” Mr. Diggs said. He was wearing a lot more clothing now, a black vest over gray pants and a waffle-knit thermal shirt, a tan hat set at a rakish tilt. Earrings sparkled in his ears, silver chains circled his neck. On one wrist he wore a skull bracelet, on the other a dignified Panerai diving watch. “Whenever I’m feeling down, I caress it,” he said.