13 Broadway Stars You May Not Know Started Out as Understudies

When you go to a show and find out that an understudy is going on for one of the leading roles, you may actually be seeing a future Tony Award winner in the making. 

While some actors make a career out of being part of a show’s ensemble and the ability to understudy or swing — a special task of having to juggle multiple tracks and go on at a moment’s notice for just about anyone — others find their way into leading roles. 

Below are a handful of actors who began their career in the theater as an understudy before becoming a bona fide Broadway star.  

Shirley MacLaine

Long before she was an Oscar-winning actress, Shirley MacLaine was an understudy to actress Carol Haney in the original 1954 production of The Pajama Game. When Haney injured her ankle, it was MacLaine’s time to go on — even if she had just about zero rehearsal. “I never had a rehearsal,” MacLaine once said on CBS Sunday Morning, adding that she went on with only five minutes’ notice. 

As the story goes, film producer Hal B. Wallis attended a performance and was so impressed, MacLaine was signed with Paramount Pictures. She was then cast in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry — for which she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year (Actress) — and told CBS Sunday Morning that she had a great working relationship with the famed filmmaker. “I had these huge Hitchcock’ian meals,” she said. “And makeup and hair came to me and said, ‘Look, you’re going to gain weight,’ and I did. I gained 25 lbs!” 

Sutton Foster 

Sutton Foster already had a few Broadway credits to her name by the time she was cast in the ensemble of Thoroughly Modern Millie’s out-of-town run, but she never anticipated the gig would land her a Tony Award. The role of Millie Dillmount was originally intended to be played by Kristin Chenoweth, who opted to take a TV series instead. Erin Dilly was then cast for its La Jolla Playhouse run, but left due to creative differences. Then, Foster stepped in. 

“She had all the right qualities,” director Michael Mayer told the New York Times in 2002. “The innocence, big-hearted openness, spectacular singing and dancing and acting chops. But she’d never done this kind of lead before. She seemed a little green.” However, he added, “Sutton stepped in and just blew us away.” 

Foster has since gone on to star in numerous Broadway productions and television series. She won her second Tony Award for her performance in Anything Goes. 

Laura Benanti

Laura Benanti was just 17 when she was auditioned for the role of Liesel in the 1998 Broadway revival of The Sound of Music — but she didn’t get it. Instead, she was asked to understudy Tony Award nominee Rebecca Luker, who was 18 years her senior, in the role of Maria. At the time, Benanti planned to attend New York University for musical theatre, but had to drop out a few weeks in.

Benanti understudied Luker for a year before taking over the role full-time at the age of 19. She went on for the first time during Luker’s two-week vacation. “I was terrified,” Benanti recalled in a 2015 interview. “I literally threw up in the wings because I was so nervous, and I had to run down that hill and throw my arms up in that classic Julie Andrews ‘The Hills are Alive’ pose, and they land on your head, and I couldn’t get them down because I was just so nervous, and my body was frozen. I just kept them on my head for the rest of the song… My mom, my dad and my sister came to every single show for the two weeks that she was gone. Every single show.” 

Benanti, who went on to win a Tony Award for her performance in Gypsy, ended up revisiting The Sound of Music when she was cast in the role of Baroness Elsa Schrader for the musical's live broadcast on NBC in 2013.  

Kelli O’Hara

When Kelli O’Hara made her Broadway debut in Jekyll & Hyde, she understudied the role of Emma Carew. She recalled during a 2016 interview with BroadwayWorld the moment she found out her dream was coming true, explaining, “It was one of the best days of my life to know I would make my Broadway debut. I couldn’t believe. It had many colors to it as I was joining a different company of the same show I had been doing on the road for over a year and playing the understudy to the role I had been playing in the road. So I had many conflicting feelings, and I was nervous. But there was nothing like receiving that news after years of dreaming. Nothing beats it.” 

O’Hara went on to rack up numerous Broadway credits, including Follies (in which she also understudied); The Light in the Piazza; South Pacific; Kiss Me, Kate; Days of Wine and Roses; and many more. She won a Tony Award for her performance as Anna Leonowens in The King and I.  

Danny Burstein

Before Danny Burstein won a Tony Award for his performance as Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, he spent years doing work on Broadway as an understudy or standby — including in A Little Hotel on the Side, Saint Joan, Three Men on a Horse, The Flowering Peach, Titanic and A Class Act. Of his early career, he once said, “I was very happy doing my small role or understudying and being a fly on the wall and listening and learning as much as I could.”

As BroadwayWorld reported earlier this year, with his Tony Award nomination for Marjorie Prime, Burstein became the most-nominated male actor in history, having earned a total of nine nominations throughout his illustrious stage career. 

Norbert Leo Butz

Norbert Leo Butz’s career took off after he was cast as understudy to both the roles of Mark and Roger in the 1996 rock opera Rent. According to a profile of the prolific actor in New York Magazine’s Vulture, Butz came to New York at 29 years old and had no agent. When Rent’s original leading men, Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal, were having some vocal trouble and the original male understudy for the roles “wasn’t working out,” Butz landed the job from attending an open call and five callbacks. He reportedly went on two days later.  

Since then, Butz has starred in numerous Broadway productions, including Wicked, Thou Shalt Not, Big Fish, My Fair Lady, Hadestown and many more. He won Tony Awards for his performances in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Catch Me If You Can.  

Orfeh

Orfeh, who was Tony-nominated for her performance as Paulette in Legally Blonde, actually made her Broadway debut as a swing in Footloose. “That was my Broadway debut,” she recalled on an episode of the Odd Woman Out podcast. “However, the person that really believed in me and was like, ‘No, I want her to be Annette in Saturday Night Fever’ was [director-choreographer] Arlene Phillips.” 

“She really lit the spark as well as Rosie O’Donnell, who is the person who put me on her show when I was in Saturday Night Fever and had me sing ‘If I Can’t Have You’ by myself in a spotlight,” Orfeh — who has also been seen on Broadway in Pretty Woman: The Musical, Chicago and more — continued. “So, these are the women that really catapulted my Broadway career, right? Really, there’s a debt of gratitude to both of them forever because I don’t know that I would be who I am if it weren’t for the two of them.”

Taye Diggs

Taye Diggs may be known for originating the role of Benjamin Coffin III in Broadway’s Rent, but he actually made his debut as an understudy for the role of Jigger Craigin in the 1994 Broadway revival of Carousel. Being cast in Carousel, he once told Larry King, “was literally a dream come true. I had high hopes of working early after graduating from college, and that’s what happened, so I felt like I was on the right track. I felt like the universe was giving me a sign saying I’ve made the right choice.” 

Diggs explained that he and actor Fisher Stevens, whom he understudied, became “fast friends” — and Stevens even “allowed” Diggs to go on in the role before the production ended its run. “Right before we closed, he said he was gonna call in sick and give me a chance to do it,” said Diggs, who was also seen on Broadway in Wicked, Chicago, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and more. “So that was awesome.” 

Patina Miller

When Patina Miller made her Broadway debut in 2011’s Sister Act, she wasn’t the original actress who played the role. Dawnn Lewis was cast as Deloris Van Cartier when the musical premiered at The Pasadena Playhouse in California in October 2006. Seth Rudetsky once said that when Miller went on for the role, it was the first time anyone heard the score completely belted, sealing her fate to originate the role in London and eventually Broadway. 

Miller went on to play the Leading Player in the 2013 revival of Pippin, winning a Tony Award for her performance, and the Witch in the 2022 revival of Into the Woods. She will be seen in this season’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. 

Vivian Vance

Vivian Vance may be best known as Ethel Mertz on the beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, but she spent some of her early career on Broadway as an understudy to Ethel Merman. 

According to Woman’s World, The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television author Geoffrey Mark recalled when Vance understudied for Merman in Anything Goes. “Merman liked her so much that she considered Vivian to be a protégé of hers,” he said. “And in 1936, when she had Red, Hot and Blue with Bob Hope, Vivian was again her understudy. The two of them became good buddies. This led to Vivian eventually becoming a star in her own right on the Broadway stage in musicals.” 

Julie Benko

Julie Benko had a true star-making moment when she was the understudy for the role of Fanny Brice in the 2022 Broadway revival of Funny Girl. She received praise for her performance before actress Lea Michele came into the production to take over the role. 

In a 2025 interview with BroadwayWorld, Benko talked about her solo show Standby, Me, which she created to tell more about her life as an understudy, starting when she was a swing in the first national tour of Spring Awakening. “So many people had questions for me about what holding that type of job is like: What’s the difference between a swing/alternate/standby/understudy?” she told BroadwayWorld at the time. “How do you learn all your roles and rehearse? How do you manage your nerves and other feelings? Did anything really crazy ever happen onstage? So, I put it all into one show! It gives an honest peek of what life is like behind the curtain. Show business can seem glamorous, but it takes a lifetime of hard work and grit to make a career. This cabaret celebrates that work and (hopefully) inspires others to keep following their passions, whatever they may be.” 

Elaine Stritch 

Since Elaine Stritch covered for Ethel Merman in 1950’s Call Me Madam, she thought she could simultaneously appear in a revival of Pal Joey because she didn’t have to go on in that production until much later in the show — and the theaters were nearby. However, according to The Cultural Critic, the producers of Pal Joey moved its tryout to Connecticut, so she had a two-and-a-half-hour trip after making her half-hour call for Call Me Madam. 

“I used to date a guy at Yale with an MG,” Stritch once said. “I called him up and told him I missed him.” She would apparently have him drive her to New Haven during the show’s tryout, but things got complicated when there was a blizzard one night. Stritch reportedly took a 7 p.m. train from Penn Station and got to the theater to see her understudy “standing there ready to go on in my costume.” According to The Cultural Critic, Stritch said, “Just give me your shoes.” Stitch recalled, “I wore a seven, she wore a nine and a half. I looked like Minnie Mouse in a Dior suit. I made my entrance.”  

Bernadette Peters

As the story goes, Bernadette Peters played a Hollywood Blonde in the second national tour of Gypsy at age 13, understudying the role of Dainty June. However, Peters later listed in her bio that she actually played the role of Dainty June on tour. She later set the record straight, saying that it was her mother’s idea to pad her résumé. 

The celebrated theater legend went on to play Rose in the 2003 Broadway revival of Gypsy, earning a Tony Award nomination for her performance. Peters is one of the most celebrated leading ladies of her time, winning Tonys for Song and Dance and Annie Get Your Gun. She was also awarded the Isabelle Stevenson Award in 2012.