Jessie Mueller is ready to take a ride on the carousel.
“I was raised on the classics,” she says.
Mueller joins a production team that feels almost as hallowed as the musical itself.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes
JESSIE MUELLER:A little bit daunting, first off.
Ultimately, it’s been really freeing.
It’s been fun to go back to my training.
Walter McBride/WireImage
I’ve always loved that kind of stuff.
What was some of the research you did in terms of the time period?
Did you know there’s a carousel museum?
I told you I nerded out.
The artistry behind creating carousels.
The research of getting into “Why was this such a big deal?”
It would be like her version of a rock concert or something.
The night Julie meets Billy is getting into how special that [outing] must have been.
Were you already a lover of Rodgers and Hammerstein?
I grew up on that stuff.
I was really more raised on the classics.
Was there something here you were particularly excited to tackle and sing?
Or something you were intimidated by?
“If I Loved You.”
Totally intimidated by it.
From the outside it has this aura of being one of the greatest musical theater scenes ever written.
But that was the one that was definitely intimidating to me from the get-go.
Has that changed the experience or your approach at all?
No, it didn’t really.
I just felt like we had to be true to it, if that makes sense.
And kind of not get there and screw it up.
There’s no, “Should we change the second act opening number?
Is it landing?”
You know it works.
What’s it like working with Renee Fleming and seeing her approach as an opera singer?
Have you traded any vocal tips?
I’m fascinated by her every day.
She’s just been so game from the get-go to dive into the process.
It’s been such fun for all of us because we’ve got people from all different worlds.
It’s been fun for everybody to get together and learn from each other.
We don’t see dream ballets that much anymore.
How do you think audiences will respond to that?
That was the hope and the goal from the beginning.
How do you make sense of someone breaking into song?
And then the idea moving from that, how do you make sense when someone breaks into dance?
I watch from the wings sometimes in the ballet.
This sounds really weird, but you might feel the audience listening and leaning forward.
It’s like every breath is like 10 feet above their head in the audience.
you’re free to just feel this energy.
It’s really amazing.
Can you tell me more about that and how the two of you have approached it as a team?
Maybe at the beginning, it sort of struck us that way.
And how are you all handling that in this particularly fraught contemporary moment?
It’s really important.
The job of the actor is never to judge your character.
You have to come from the inside of your character.
Did you find a lot of unexpected similarities and parallels between this andWaitress?
Funnily enough, this feels so different.
I’m not even sure I could explain why.
It could be that one is a very modern story.
One feels like more of an exploration of where we’ve been.
I had such an amazing experience working on that film and it was my first foray into that.
