Exclusive: Taylor Louderman on Finding Courage, Embracing Vulnerability and ‘Exposing Your Heart’

When Taylor Louderman was playing Mean Girls’ Queen Bee, Regina George, she was looking for a way to give back to a Broadway community that was showering her with so much love. 

At the time, the actress was in one of the most high-profile Broadway stage adaptations — with Tina Fey intimately involved in the musical’s development — and she was nominated for a 2018 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress. 

“I was looking for other opportunities to be creative, opportunities to give back, especially because I was playing the villain,” Louderman exclusively tells BroadwayWorld. “And I wanted to build something. I also saw that there was a need in our industry to support artists.” 

As someone whose main focus was performing, Louderman thought, “I’m memorizing what someone else wrote, but it never really crossed my mind that, ‘Oh, maybe I could tell a story,’” she says. “So I wanted to empower new voices and give them a space where we could bring their work to life.” 

It wasn’t long before she and music director Benjamin Rauhala created Write Out Loud, an ​​annual contest creating opportunities for musical theater’s next generation of songwriters. In its first year, Joriah Kwamé’s “Little Miss Perfect” — performed by Louderman herself — quickly took off (its YouTube video has more than 11 million views), and young people from all over have said they “felt seen or understood” through the song.

Being vulnerable in both writing and performing is something Louderman hopes other Write Out Loud contestants and alums embrace. 

Louderman acknowledges that it’s “really hard to build and craft a musical that pulls at our heartstrings,” but with Write Out Loud, she wants to give artists a space to “feel raw so we can invite new stories from different backgrounds” in, adding that original work “can be so powerful in pushing society forward.” 

Throughout the process, Louderman says she’s “learned a lot about myself” when it comes to leading the Write Out Loud program. Like the writers, she too must occasionally find courage to put herself out there.  

Following Louderman’s time in Mean Girls, she married husband Brooks Toth in June 2020 and began to focus on family. The couple welcomed their first son, Addison, in January 2023 and their second son, Thompson, in September 2024. The family now resides in St. Louis full-time to be closer to family. This summer, she played Nellie Forbush in The Muny’s production of South Pacific and opened up to her Instagram followers about having a bit of performance anxiety. 

Despite Louderman’s stacked résumé, sometimes “the more awareness we gain, and the more we see how it could go wrong, the more we worry how we are perceived,” she admits. “For a while, I was really like, ‘Wait, I performed on Broadway for years without fear. I stepped away to have kids. Why is this so hard all of a sudden? I shouldn’t be nervous.’” 

“I was fighting the fear of performing for so long,” Louderman says. “I think inviting it in and understanding that’s just part of being human — and letting it come along for the ride — was a big shift for me. Knowing I was afraid and doing it anyway was also a hurdle. I just had to go, almost like a giant trust fall.”

Earlier this year, Louderman performed “World Burn” nearly seven years after saying goodbye to Regina (Reneé Rapp took over the role until the show played its final performance in 2020). In an Instagram comment, Louderman admitted it “was so scary” to revisit the 11 o’clock number, yet she was still met with a major round of applause from fans and friends.

Why the nerves? “A girl that was 10 years younger than me came in and took on the role, and she was amazing and has this incredible recording artist career, so there’s one thing that made me go, ‘Gosh, am I good enough still?’” says Louderman. “Then there was this other thing of like, ‘I took a break to focus on family, and I want to prove that I still got it — that I can still do it.’” 

Louderman wanted to show that performers who also want to have a family can do both — that they “can still come back and show up in a big way,” she says. “It was kind of like a perfect storm.” 

Still, she recognizes, “So much of being a performer, I think, is exposing your heart and trying to connect with an audience and being vulnerable.”

Louderman is back in New York on Monday, September 14, to host the annual Write Out Loud cabaret at 54 Below, where this year’s winning songs will finally come to life in concert — and she can’t think of a better way to spend her time back in Manhattan. 

“This is their vulnerable work going on stage in front of a big audience, so to be there and hold their hand through it all and celebrate them is what always brings me joy,” she says. “You can see the light in their eyes as they hear what was in their mind come alive.” 

In the meantime, she’s also preparing for Write Out Loud’s next EP release, which BroadwayWorld exclusively revealed will feature a cast of Broadway stars, and even dabbling in directing after making her directorial debut with The Addams Family at Ozark Actors Theatre (OAT) in Rolla, Missouri. 

Louderman learned a lot from working with people like Fey and Mean Girls director Casey Nicholaw. “Creating a safe space where the best idea always wins was a big takeaway,” she says. “I feel really grateful for my past experiences to bring them into this new era.”

Write Out Loud: From Contest to Concert Volume 8 will play 54 Below on September 14 at 7 p.m. Tickets and information are available at 54Below.org. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Taylor Louderman

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