Film & TV News
How Did Beanie Feldstein React When She Booked Broadway’s Hello, Dolly!?
The actor, also starring on screen in Lady Bird, confesses where she was and how she reacted when she got the news.
Actor Beanie Feldstein has been a Broadway fan since before she could read. As she tells late night host Jimmy Fallon, her third birthday party theme was Funny Girl. Not to mention, when she was five, she was cast as the understudy for the title role in her community production of Annie because her talent was amazing, but they were nervous about her learning the part at her age and reading level.
Watch the video above to see a clip of young Feldstein singing “Tomorrow.”
Read: FROM HELLO, DOLLY! TO LADY BIRD: BEANIE FELDSTEIN’S VERY GOOD YEAR
As a diehard Broadway fan, Feldstein says it was always her dream to be on the Great White Way—so you can imagine how she reacted when she learned she’d make her Broadway debut as Minnie Fay in the revival of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler.
At the time, she was in California filming Lady Bird (both the film and the revival are produced by Scott Rudin). “I was in L.A., and I did a tape with a casting director in L.A. and they sent it off to New York—and an hour-and-a-half later I got the call that I got the part,” says Feldstein. “I was in my childhood bedroom because I was staying with my parents when we filmed in L.A. and it was just surrounded by all my Broadway posters and crying. I fell off my bed. I ran downstairs to see my parents and they were crying and kvelling.”
Catch Feldstein in Hello, Dolly! at the Schubert Theatre. Next month, the production will welcome a new headliner: Bernadette Peters—who also happens to be an Annie alum.
