Sutton Foster Discusses Encores! THE WILD PARTY, VIOLET & More

Sutton Foster is back in New York!

Two-time Tony Award-winning Broadway superstar Sutton Foster returns to New York while on hiatus from her hit TV Land series YOUNGER for a limited run in the Encores! Off-Center production of Andrew Lippa's THE WILD PARTY and discusses her participation in the Jazz Age musical as part of a new interview.

Foster shares, "I think where I'm at in my career-especially my stage career-is that I want to do things that are left turns. After Anything Goes, I didn't know how to keep going in the direction of Reno and that sort of big show, with sequins and showstoppers. When I did Violet it was unlike anything I'd ever done, and working with Leigh Silverman, the director of Violet, pushed me in a way that I needed-personally, professionally, all those things. Wild Party is just another left turn. It's unlike any character I've ever played: dirty and raw and sexy. But I feel safe, cause I know I have Leigh. I'm excited to do it with her, cause I think she can pull it out of me."

Reflecting on VIOLENT, Foster continues, "A lot of it happened prior to Broadway, when we did it here at City Center. When you work on these things, you have something crazy like five days of rehearsal, and then it's tech, and then it's the first show. Violet was the same thing. It was amazing how much transformed in those five days. Leigh and I talked a lot after rehearsal. Her biggest note for me was that Violet wasn't nice, wasn't shiny, wasn't soft. She was ugly. I didn't know how to approach that. She was like, "Nothing about her is pretty. She doesn't believe she's pretty." I'm from the South-I was raised to smile and have fun and be the good girl. She needed me to reveal my own ugliness. That happened during those five days. And we only had one performance. It felt crazy to allow that to be okay-that I didn't have to be pretty and shiny, that I could be messy and ugly, and that that actually was beautiful."

Additionally, Foster says of VIOLET composer and Encores! Off-Center artistic director Jeanine Tesori, "When people ask me, "Who is your hero? Who is your mentor? Who inspires you?", it's Jeanine. I owe everything to the people that were involved in Millie out of town, because they decided to cast me. Which was, you know, crazy. Crazy. (laughs) Millie was life-changing. Then when Shrek came up....the one character that, in a weird way, wasn't a stretch, or that I could just read right off the page, was Fiona. I understood this character's struggle between being a princess and being her real self. I was like, A burping, farting princess? I know what this is, this bipolar thing. Jeanine inspires me because she is constantly challenging herself and growing. She's just a kickass woman-mother-friend. I feel safe around her. I would follow her to the ends of the earth. And she's a great person to have at City Center as a champion of all these shows. She talked to me about participating this year, and I was like, "Yeah. What? When?" There are very few people who text me and ask me to do something, and without hesitation, I'm like, "It doesn't matter what it is. I will do it." She's one of those people."

Check out the original article on the matter here.

More information on Encores! Off-Center's THE WILD PARTY is available at the official site here.