There's no doubt that when Jessie Mueller won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the title role of the Broadway jukebox show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, her entire Evanston family of talented actors was overflowing with pride and admiration. The same could also be said for local theater fans who had seen Mueller triumph in leading lady roles throughout the Chicago area in shows like Meet Me in St. Louis at Drury Lane Theatre, She Loves Me at Writers Theatre, and All Shook Up and Guys and Dolls at the Marriott Theatre before she headed east to New York to triumph on and off Broadway.
Mueller's debut on Broadway was in an unfortunate 2011 flop: a revised revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever starring Harry Connick Jr. Yet Mueller managed to walk away from the production with stellar reviews and her first Tony nomination. Since then, Mueller has found continual work in New York and drawn plenty of critical raves as Cinderella in a Central Park revival of Into the Woods, as Carrie in a televised New York Philharmonic production of Carousel, as Helena Landless in the Broadway revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and as a replacement Billie Bendix in the Broadway musical Nice Work if You Can Get It, opposite Matthew Broderick.
But it was starring as Carole King in Beautiful that has truly catapulted Mueller to Broadway-star status. Featuring songs by King and her colleagues Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, Beautiful follows the songwriting career of King through marriage and divorce to her collaborator, Gerry Goffin, before she ultimately becomes a sensation as a pop performer herself with the best-selling album Tapestry.
Mueller granted the Windy City Times an interview, but only via email so she could help rest her voice for doing eight shows a week of Beautiful. First of all, we had to ask about her Tony Awards experience at Radio City Music Hall on June 8.
"That night was crazy because most of the performers and nominees were running back and forth between sitting in their seats and getting prepped and un-prepped to perform," Mueller responded. "Some of my favorite memories are from the dressing rooms backstage—everyone going back and forth from their red carpet looks to their costumes and watching their friends and colleagues on the broadcast on monitors backstage."
Mueller said she has gone back to watch some of the Tony Award TV clips, and that she's happy about how Beautiful came off during its performance and how being able to watch herself perform a duet with Carole King "was a trip."
"My folks were there, with my boyfriend, up front. But my sister and best friend were also there, just farther back," said Mueller, happy at the fact that the agent to her father, Roger Mueller, specifically wrote a clause into his Goodman Theatre contract allowing him to skip a day of Brigadoon rehearsals and attend the Tony Awards if his daughter was nominated for Beautiful. "When I mentioned Abby's name ( my sister ) she screamed! It was awesome. I could hear it all the way on the stage. I think my family and I are still a bit in shock. I remember it happening and fully experienced it but at times it feels like that was another person."
Now Carole King herself very publicly distanced herself initially from the creation of Beautiful, leaving many of the artistic matters to her daughter, Sherry Groffin Kondor. Mueller reflected on the creation of Beautiful by saying "this was the most intense and ultimately collaborative process I've ever been on with a show."
"It really was built from the ground up. Our book writer, Doug McGrath, did a brilliant job interviewing the four songwriters—Barry, Cynthia, Gerry and Carole. And it was through those interviews that he created the events of the play," Mueller stated. "What was wonderful was the combination of that with a group of actors who had done their 'homework' and were extremely committed to bringing these REAL people to authentic life onstage. Everyone was committed to making it great. We had rewrites every day. Song choices changed, were rearranged, scrapped, brought back.
"It was a living breathing changing thing. And at times that was exhilarating but by the time we were hitting previews in New York, I think we were all craving some things to lock in—which thankfully, they did. And I'm really proud of the end result. As far as Carole being reluctant to see it, that always made sense to me. I saw that as an essential part of her—believing in the work but not wanting to be the 'front man.'"
"Just seeing what's she's doing in Beautiful, it's different from her," said Roger Mueller about his daughter's performance in Beautiful, adding that he was speaking as a fellow actor rather than an admiring parent. "The way she puts the voice is very different than her normal sweet spot of voice. The way she's crafted it, I'm still not sure how she's created that sound. It's just enough of Carole King to give you the impression, but she's still able to sing with her voice coming through."
Jessie Mueller scoffed at the question of whether she was able to work on any other projects concurrently with her run of Beautiful on Broadway, nor did she specify on how long she is contracted with the show. Mueller also said that she misses Chicago often and is bummed out that she won't be able to see Brigadoon at the Goodman—not only because her father is in it, but because she's also previously worked before with director Rachel Rockwell and Liza Lerner of the Alan Jay Lerner estate. Mueller also added that she would love to return to Chicago if the project was right, like a pre-Broadway tryout or perhaps a limited run like one of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals lined up at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
"New York can be a very stressful and high octane kind of place, but it has been very good to me," Mueller said. "I've been extremely blessed in the opportunities I've had and the amazing people I've met."
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical continues on Broadway in New York in an open run at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. For more information, visit www.beautifulonbroadway.com .
