Bryce Pinkham, Alex Brightman, and More Talk Musicals and Theatre at FanX

This year’s FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, held September 25-27, 2025, was once again filled with connections to musicals and theatre, some obvious but others unexpected.

“FanX is the top shelf,” Tony nominee Bryce Pinkham, who is currently in rehearsals for CHESS, told BroadwayWorld exclusively. “I mean, we're treated so, so well here.  They take good care of us, make sure we have everything we need. And I think that translates to the experience of the fans, because I'm in good spirits and and I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy to talk to people and answer questions about Broadway, about HELLUVA BOSS, about TV and film—anything, you know.”

In her panel, May Hong talked about being at the convention with fans of her hit musical film KPOP DEMON HUNTERS: “Getting time face to face with people, one on one, and getting to hear their story and that it's a comfort movie for them, I just feel so humbled and privileged that I get to be a small part of something that makes people happy.”

To the delight of the attendees, more actors seemed to participate in panels than in previous years.  Ian Somerhalder (LOST) talked in his panel about how his off Broadway play DOG SEES GOD helped him be seen as a serious actor, and Ben Barnes (PRINCE CASPIAN) discussed his professional debut playing drums in the onstage band for BUGSY MALONE in the West End: “I was so excited to get that role.” Frank Grillo lamented the difficulty of a dance he had to learn for an episode of PEACEMAKER: “It was like you were rehearsing for CATS on Broadway.”

Emily Hampshire repeated “I love musicals” more than once in her panel, saying her dream role has always been Sally Bowles in CABARET, which she ended up playing in an episode of SCHITT’S CREEK. “The reason why I'm not in musicals is because I can't sing that well, I can't dance that well—but I will commit,” she said. “Any time I do a show, I always ask the showrunner, so are we going to do a musical episode?  And I asked Dan [Levy] this in season one, and he's like, yeah, maybe the talent will put on a musical. And I was excited, even knowing that Stevie would be the girl in black, moving furniture, moving stage stuff. And then cut to season five, I saw the script for CABARET.”

“What I love about musicals is that you get to say the thing that you could never say,” Hampshire added, reflecting on her performance of “Maybe This Time.”  “And so I feel like in that moment, Stevie really got to shed all her sarcasm that's this protective thing to just say how she really feels in song.”

When BroadwayWorld asked Melissa Benoist (BEAUTIFUL) about the crossover musical episode of SUPERGIRL and THE FLASH, she said, “GLEE had the musical numbers down to a science, the cameras knew exactly what to cover, we had a schedule, so each musical number took like six hours to shoot by the time I got there. When we did the musical crossover in the Arrowverse, it was very different, because the whole crew had never done musical numbers before.  So it was a lot of trial by fire, and it took a lot of figuring out where Grant [Gustin (WATER FOR ELEPHANTS)] and I were like, guys, you can’t keep doing this tap dance.”

Benoist laughed and continued, “But that being said, it was really, really satisfying because Grant and I only got to do one number together on GLEE because he was a Warbler and I was in the New Directions, so we only have it on a little crossover on GLEE. And it was really awesome to be able to get to actually do the song and dance with him.”

“You cannot take the music theater out of a girl, and stage is my first love,” Benoist said during her panel. “Musicals were my first love.  It was what I wanted to do before I even got the job on GLEE. I was actively like, I wanted to be on Broadway, and I did. And I would love to again, it's just a matter of finding the right project.”

“I will always go back to Broadway—that’s what gives me life,” said Tony winner Anika Noni Rose (CAROLINE, OR CHANGE) in her panel. She gave advice for taking care of your voice (“if I’m on Broadway, I drink a liter of water before I leave the house”), preparing for a part (“a big role is the same as a small role, and you want to attack it the same way”), and long runs (“every night is a new night”).

Rose said her favorite song from THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, in which she famously voiced Princess Tiana, is “Down in New Orleans,” and upon request, she sang a large portion of “Almost There” a cappella.  After saying that another of her favorite Disney films is MARY POPPINS, she sang an excerpt from “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

The voice of TANGLED’s Flynn Ryder, Tony nominee Zachary Levi (SHE LOVES ME) shared his favorite songs from the movie in his panel, commenting on “Mother Knows Best” (“such a fantastic song”) and “I See the Light” (“that’s an incredible sequence”), but ultimately choosing “I’ve Got a Dream” as his top choice (“it’s upbeat, it’s fun, it’s such classic Menken”).

Levi listed the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman Renaissance films as some of his favorite Disney movies, including THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and ALADDIN. “I believed, I dreamed that I would be in a Disney animated musical one day,” he said.  “And not only did I get to be in a Disney animated musical, I got to be in one of the best.”

At the panel for musical animated TV series HELLUVA BOSS, Tony nominee Alex Brightman (SCHOOL OF ROCK) danced a kick line onstage in a BEETLEJUICE t-shirt and then talked about receiving the offer to join the show during the pandemic: “I was sitting feeling sorry for myself, and I got an email from somebody that said, I saw you in BEETLEJUICE a few months ago—we’re doing a show, would you like to voice on this thing? And I felt incredible because somebody had offered me a job. I didn't care what it was. I wanted to work. I wanted to feel creative. I watched the pilot, and I was crying laughing. I mean, I thought it was so funny, so I said yes, not knowing that it would quite literally change my life.”

“It's mind blowing,” his co-star, Pinkham (A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER), said when BroadwayWorld asked him exclusively about the fan response for the show. “When I'm on stage, I hear the applause, hopefully, at the end of the night, and in the booth, you just kind of send it off into the ether, and you see the performance when everybody else does when it comes out online six to nine months later.  This is actually the audience coming to tell you what it meant to them. I get people coming up to me and crying and telling me what the show means to them, or wanting to hear their favorite line and excited for the next season. And it's very interactive.”

“It feels like the fan base is actually part of the show, in a way that you can't achieve on Broadway because, you know, the show is two hours long, that's the story and it’s done,” he continued.  “And if you want to come back and see that story again, you can, but with this, it's an ongoing series, so the fans and I can have a conversation about what we hope will happen in the series. And I can say, oh, there's a song coming out, I think you're gonna love it. They can come back, you know, the following year, and say, you told me that I would love that song, and I did, and here's why.  So it feels like an ongoing conversation with the fan base, in a way that's different and special.”

If you missed out on this year’s rush of celebrity-infused excitement, you will definitely want to plan on attending next year.  The FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, which will return September 24-26, 2026 at the Salt Palace Convention Center, is the most attended convention in the state of Utah and the largest comic convention in North America per capita. To learn more, visit fanxsaltlake.com.

Photo Credit: Bryce Pinkham at FanX. Courtesy FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention.