Interview: Megan Hilty Sings With the Boston Pops

In a recent interview with Broadway World, the Boston Pops' Maestro Keith Lockhart described Megan Hilty as one of "Broadway's ascending divas". A quick glance at her resume indicated that he might very well be accurate in his assessment of this young performer's future claim in the annals of Broadway.

Starting out as Glinda's understudy in the New York company of WICKED, Hilty went on to assume the role. She then got star billing in Dolly Parton's musical NINE TO FIVE and caused a sensation when she essayed the role of Lorelei Lee in the Encores! production of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. However, her biggest claim to fame was in the television series SMASH which brought her into millions of homes each week.

Speaking by phone, Megan Hilty's vivacious personality comes across vividly. She's articulate, funny and serious about her work.

A Washingtonian by birth, Hilty always wanted to be a singer. "I started out training classically," she explains. " I thought I'd be going into that world until I decided that it wasn't quite for me and my personality. It just wasn't a great fit. I'd done musical theater from a very early age. It became very, very clear early on that this was what I was going to do. Whether I was onstage or off, I was going to be in the performing arts somehow." That led her to Carnegie-Mellon and her first professional job after being graduated was WICKED. "Yeah, I became the standby for Glinda just out of college," Hilty says with a laugh.

"It was terrifying," the actress continues. "I actually went on in the role a lot. I was standing by for Jennifer Laura Thompson and she'd just had a baby before she took over so I was very lucky in that respect. I don't know how many times I got to go on before I took over but it was a great luxury to try things out before actually taking over." Comparisons to her predecessors in the role were inevitable. "Oh, being part of something that big you're going to be compared to everybody. That was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome with that show. I had to feel okay about my performance and not feel that I had to do anything that anyone else did."

Her next Broadway show was a starring role in NINE TO FIVE in which she played the character that Dolly Parton played in the original film. "It was the most fun I've ever had on stage. The cast and crew and everyone was amazing. I think that getting to work with Dolly Parton was literally a dream come true. It was life changing as well. Just watching her operate was really inspirational."

When the conversation moves to questions about why NINE TO FIVE never caught on with audiences, Hilty becomes pensive. "You know, I wish I could tell you but it's not my job to know those things. My job is to show up every day and do the best I can. I never saw the show but I know it was a fun show. It wasn't supposed to change the world or anything. It was just a fun time at the theater. Maybe audiences were looking for something different. I don't know."

Hilty's next stage performance in New York was the very much acclaimed revival of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES for the CityCenter's Encores! series. In his review of that production in the New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote: "Megan Hilty achieves the unlikely feat of wrestling Lorelei Lee from the hands of [Marilyn] Monroe and [ Carol Channing] to make the character entirely and originally hers."

Hilty obviously enjoyed the experience, saying, "It's something I think about all the time. I'm not done with it. I hope I get the chance to do it again. The material is so great and I was very lucky to get to do the show for even that short amount of time."

However, most people are familiar with Megan Hilty because of her starring role on the recently cancelled television series SMASH. How did she fall into it?

"It was pilot season two years ago," she recalls. "I was auditioning like everyone else out in LA. I got the script and it stuck out like a sore thumb immediately. 'This is about my life' I thought. The problem was that the character of Ivy Lynn is supposed to be not only a dancer but also an ensemble member of ten years. I am what's called 'a singer who moves'-not necessarily a dancer. I anticipated a bunch of horrendous dance calls and all that stuff, so I called my manager and said, 'You know what? Maybe we should skip this one and wait until it becomes a big hit. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to become a guest on the show. I'd like to save myself some embarrassment in these dance calls.' Luckily they wound up hiring a choreographer [who won an Emmy for his work on the show] who made it look like I knew what I was doing. "

As for the rumors that the show might not be cancelled or have a second life on cable, Hilty replies, "I've seen all sorts of things on social media and it's amazing to see how the fan base for the show has reacted. It's been really wonderful, but again, these are things that are so far out of my control that I feel I can't weigh in at all. If a campaign was started there wouldn't be a way to raise the millions and millions of dollars to finance a Season Three of the show. It's great to know that we've had such a loyal fan base for the show. There have been many articles written about how no one was watching the show and that's not true. It's just that the people who were watching didn't account for the Neilson ratings. People don't watch TV like that anymore. Unfortunately, that meant we weren't getting the ratings that the advertisers wanted." It will be interesting to see what kind of life SMASH has in re-runs. For all we know, it may develop a cult following much like THE ODD COUPLE---which was never a ratings favorite.

Coming up on her agenda, is her appearance with the famed Boston Pops on May 23rd and 24th. What will she be performing? "Well, I came out with an album that is not musical theater at all and a lot of people have been saying that I'd be performing selections from that, I don't know why. I'm not, though. I'm going to be sticking to my musical theater roots and do lots of musical theater stuff that I've done on stage and on SMASH. It'll be a nice combination."

Shortly after this conversation, it was announced that Megan Hilty and Aaron Tveit were scheduled to participate in a reading of Cole Porter's CAN-CAN that will hopefully be presented on Broadway in the near future. If this is so, it would certainly make Maestro Lockhart's comment about Megan Hilty being an "ascending Broadway Diva" truly prophetic. It would be a pleasure for audiences to hear her interpretations of such Cole Porter standards as "C'est Magnifique", "I Love Paris" and "Allez-Vous En". Perhaps she'll perform one of these at Symphony Hall when she appears there with the Boston Pops. It would be very nice indeed.