Nobody likes to be pigeonholed, but is it a dangerous career move to be too un-pigeonholed? After all, Laura Benanti has Broadway, movie, television, concert, cabaret, and writing credits �" and she even danced with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.
"If my goal was to be a famous person, then it probably would be a detriment to me," Benanti said of the versatility conundrum. "But my goal is to be a happy person �" being a versatile actor who also gets to be a pretty normal person is perfect for me."
But normal for Benanti also means busy. She'll be back on Broadway early next year in a revival of She Loves Me, she has a recurring role in the upcoming TV series Supergirl, she's at work on a book of humorous personal essays, she was featured in PBS' recent Memorial Day special, and she's guest-starring with the Boston Gay Men's Chorus in June. More immediately, she's the headliner at 42nd Street Moon's Song of a Summer Night gala at Bimbo's 365 Club on June 1. (Tickets at 42ndstmoon.org.)
Working with musical director Todd Almond, she's planning a "hybrid version" of the two cabaret shows she's done at New York's 54 Below. There will be songs from the Broadway shows she has done, including Nine and The Sound of Music, as well as songs "that I love that aren't necessarily from the shows that I have been in," she said recently from New York. But the set list will not include anything from Gypsy, which earned her a Tony Award in 2008 in the revival that starred Patti LuPone as Mama Rose.
Benanti's connection to The Sound of Music is multifold. After graduating from high school in New Jersey, she skipped college to play a nun in the 1998 Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. She was also understudy to Rebecca Luker as Maria, and took over from Luker to officially become a Broadway star at age 19. More recently, she gained considerable attention for her performance as the Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the 2013 live broadcast starring Carrie Underwood.
Her most recent high-profile television work came as country singer Sadie Stone in the third season of Nashville. The role started off as a confidante to Connie Britton's character as a Nashville superstar, and as the season progressed, Sadie's abusive ex-husband came back to torment her anew before she shot him dead and left town. Benanti doesn't know if the Nashville writers plan to bring Sadie back.
"I'd love to come back, but then there's my schedule as a recurring character on Supergirl to work around," she said. In the CBS series coming this fall, Benanti plays planet Krypton native Alura Zor-El, the biological mother of the title character (and Superman's cousin), who rockets her daughter to Earth shortly before Krypton explodes. Presumably Alura dies along with her planet, so how does she become a recurring character? "Sorry," said Benanti. "I can't tell you that. That's a spoiler."
Although Benanti has already been a regular or recurring character on nine television series, she says her heart belongs to Broadway. "I grew up as a little girl wanting to do it, and it's the thing I want to do forever and ever." Broadway aficionados are particularly keen on her Twitter posts that often have a wry, self-deprecating humor. The popularity of her tweets led St. Martin's Press to offer her a book deal.
The collection of essays will offer her take on the funny and sometimes weird experiences of her career and personal life. "A lot of the people who follow me on Twitter are young women, and my goal is to direct them in a humorous way to a less male-centered way of living," she said. "It's good to make people laugh, but also to point out that I've made a lot of choices that were not healthy for me because I was prioritizing the attention of men over my own self, over female friendships, abdicating myself to other people, and I think that's a common theme for women. And for gay men, of course, my other favorite group of humans."
Her affinity for gay men and support of causes important to them came from her love of her late uncle, Robert Wonneberger. "He was one of the founding members of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C., and he was also an incredible drag artist whose drag name was Wanda Mae Wonneberger," she said. "He was extremely important to me, so gay causes, gay rights, gay people are also really important to me."
Following her second divorce by age 34, Benanti and her family found solace in a gay cruise to Alaska. "I felt like it was my Uncle Bob looking out for me, sending me out on a ship with a bunch of men who didn't want to have sex with you, and a family who loves you more than anything in the world, keeping you from harm in that way."
Benanti is now deep into a relationship with Patrick Brown, a director of marketing at a start-up. "He's not an actor, which only took me 10 years to figure out was not the best thing to do." The downside of dating an actor? "Oh, God," she said, "we don't have enough time to get into that."