Interview: Cheryl Stern of FUNNY GIRL at Bass Concert Hall

Cheryl Stern is a powerhouse performer and storyteller with an incredible career spanning Broadway, national tours, TV, and beyond. Next week, she'll be in town with the National Tour of FUNNY GIRL, playing Mrs. Strakosh and stepping into the role of Fanny Brice at select performances. 

A true Broadway veteran, Cheryl has graced the stage in the Tony Award-winning revival of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (starring Kelsey Grammer), THE WOMEN alongside Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Coolidge, and LAUGHING ROOM ONLY with the legendary Jackie Mason. She’s also lit up FIORELLO at Encores!/NY City Center and CANDIDIDE (CANDIDE, y'all!) at NY City Opera.

Off-Broadway, Cheryl not only starred in but co-wrote A LETTER TO HARVEY MILK, earning critical acclaim for her work. She’s created unforgettable roles in productions like BEING AUDREY and 27 RUE DE FLEURUS and appeared in audience favorites like I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT NOW CHANGE,  and THE IMMIGRANT. Her national tour credits include LES MISERABLES, EVITA, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, and many more.

On screen, you may have caught Cheryl in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (recurring as Ida), Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Unforgettable, and even Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall on PBS. Her film work includes This Is Where I Leave You (starring Jane Fonda, Tina Fey, and Jason Bateman).

Cheryl is also an award-winning writer (Jonathan Larson Award) and an in-demand acting coach. She shares insights from her life on tour in her engaging Instagram series, Packing While Unpacking.

From the Broadway stage to your TV screen, Cheryl Stern continues to captivate audiences with her versatility, humor, and heart.

I was delighted to recently visit with Cheryl. We chatted about so many interesting things I could barely whittle them down to share with our BWW audience.

BWW: First off, I’m excited to be talking with someone who has such a breadth of experience and career in the acting field as you, Cheryl. What’s it like to be on the road with a show when you could also be doing other things at this point in your career?

CS: Yes! I was talking with a friend about this recently. She was asking , “What’s it like? I don't know if I can do this. "You're doing it. How are you doing this?” And I talked her through all of it and things to look out for that I wasn't ready for because it's a different experience than when we toured years ago.

I was in the first national tour of Evita and Les Mis and a bunch of shows. And in those days, you stayed in a city for five or six months. So you got an apartment and you enjoyed Boston and you enjoyed Washington and the Kennedy Center and you enjoyed living in other cities. And it was still stressful to make that move and set up phones everywhere. In those days, we didn't have cell phones. That's really going back, but it was a very different experience. And now we're moving every week.

So the change of moving every week and traveling on what would be a day off is extraordinary. And yet, I love what I do so much that I'm a mess on Mondays. And then it all goes away on Tuesday night when we open in front of you, a brand new audience, and do this amazing show. Oh, it's what I'm built to do. And it's what I love. So that never goes away. And I said to my friend yesterday too, you know, I said, everybody goes, “oh, you're living the dream.” I'm like, no, I'm living the addiction. Yeah. We are somewhat addicted to this life and to the joy that it brings. So you put up with a lot of the other logistical stuff in order to do it. Yeah, we are, aren't we? That's, you know, theater people, we're a breed.

BWW: Anything about being in Austin that you're looking forward to?

CS: I cannot wait. I have many cousins, I'm from Buffalo. I have a lot of cousins who migrated to Austin, starting with my oldest cousin who moved there in the hippie era and started her life there. And then the younger cousins all moved to follow suit. So I have a lot of family that's always been in Austin and I've never been there, which is crazy. Well, I have cousins coming. My cousin, Susie Stern is a big famous jazz singer in Austin and she's migrated back to the East again but she's there this week and next week and will be coming to the show with her beautiful daughter who lives in Austin.

So I'm thrilled and I'm excited that South by Southwest is happening. I've never experienced that. I don't know how much time we'll have, but hopefully.

BWW: Well, you'll just put up with South by Southwest traffic is what you'll do.

CS: We've already been warned about that, that we'll probably be leaving for the theater at three or two. Well, you will learn. You will learn.

BWW: The weather’s mostly great here, though. The best summers are winters in Central Texas. 

CS: Oh my God, I'm so excited. So excited. And you know, obviously you know this, but Austin is just known to the rest of us everywhere as just so hip and so culturally progressive. And I've always known that and I can't believe I haven't been there. So this is big. 

BWW: Austin is typically open-hearted and accepting, which I think is true of theatre arts in general, when you have to embody somebody who's different…

CS: And isn't that what Funny Girl is about? I think it's about triumphing over the norms, being other, and being found exceptional for being other and being special is a wonderful thing as opposed to a bad thing. And my character, Mrs. Strakosh sets that all in motion and it's very interesting to me. Basically speaking about what the norms of 1908 are and how Fanny doesn't have a fat chance in hell. And she's proven wrong. And she gets on board fast because she just wants to always be right. So then she decides, oh my God, she's a star. She's fabulous. I always knew it. But in the beginning, she sings, “if a girl isn't pretty like a Miss Atlantic, you get from life is pity and a pat.” Well, and you know the lines. I love that for Mrs. Strakosh it's not out of meanness, but it's out of what she knows to be true and she doesn't want to see Fanny get hurt. And I think, you know, we're in a different time, thank God, slowly changing, but in 1908, and even when I was coming up, you had to be the gorgeous, tall, skinny, girl who could either sing really high or you had to be the really funny tall, skinny girl who could belt her face off. And there was really nothing in between. And I fought it and I kept going because I loved what I did. And I found out who I really was when I was like 40 and I realized it was comedy, you know, and character work and that there was a world for me, but I felt like Fanny when I was young.

Because I'm a teacher, I watch so many students struggling with this, “Where do I belong thing” And I just always say, “you are enough.” And it's more than that. It's You Are. You are extraordinary for being who you are. And Fanny Brice broke that mold and changed everything. Took a long time for anybody else to catch up with it, but of course she paved the way for Joan Rivers. She paid the way for all Phyllis Diller, all these women.

BWW: Lucille Ball!

Lucille Ball, who was gorgeous, but didn't really find it until she could be her quirky, kooky self. Yeah. You know, that's what made her special was when she could let it all out. Funny comes from pain a lot of times. We all know this with comedians, but I think that story is told very well also with Funny Girl and Fanny Brice and the price you pay for stardom and what's behind the funny.

Barbra Streisand, you know, did what Fanny Brice did in 1964 on Broadway. The world went nuts. And it was such a match made in heaven for her to embody that character.

BWW: What do you think we see differently in the story now than when the musical first premiered and when the film was done? 

CS: I think we root for her independence in a different way from Nick Arnstein and for her pushing through that relationship, which was toxic. She loved him, but he was not great. And in the real world, Nick Arnstein was really not great. And he's more romanticized in the musical. We grow to love him as well, which I think is great. He's humanized in the musical, but she stands up for herself ultimately and moves on and is not defined by a man. And she learns a lot about relationships and trying to make everything right for him when she couldn't control the situation. She grows up, she learns a lot.

And I think looking at that now, we look at it and we go, yes, “hello!”

And you can't fix this. You can't fix someone's problems by trying to do everything for them. Fanny does a lot of manipulating to try to keep Nick afloat. And she can't save him. And that's big, because I think women thought that they were defined by men. Yeah, yeah. And in that case,

BWW: There's a spiritual guru out there. His name is Dr. David Hawkins. He's a psychiatrist. He says, “when you help an addict, like in this case, you are extending the hell to which they have to go to recover.”

That's the show! And they wind up setting each other free. Yeah. It may not be what she thought she wanted, but that's what happens. And she goes on. She doesn't shrivel and die. That's the power at the end when she stands up and you'll see a big red spangly dress and she says, nobody's gonna rain on my parade at the end. It's so empowering. That's very modern.

BWW: What about I am Man, You are Woman. How is that translated now? You get where I'm going with this…

CS: Very good point, very good point. And yes, it was written in 1964 and he is wooing her. And yes, it's incredibly sexist, misogynistic, whatever you want to call it. Yes. And again, we look at these things in the time they were written and in the era that they're written about. So we don't have to agree with it politically, but we can still watch these things and see it’s part of her journey. And she wanted the relationship with him. It was not to her. And whether the way he pursued her was right or wrong is not necessarily for us to judge in the middle of the journey. You just take it, you see it through her eyes, and you watch what happens. But yes, also to acknowledge that even in 1964, we were saying and doing things that right now just rub us very wrong.

BWW: What is your favorite moment in the show?

CS: Oh my God, I love at the end when it's so sad and Nikki comes back from jail and he's the one that says we can't keep doing this to each other. He says, what did you ever get from me that you couldn't have gotten for yourself? And the first thing she says is our daughter. And then she says, and you made me feel almost beautiful. And it's crushing on so many levels and yet very true. And she needed that in some way to allow herself to succeed to the level that she did. Yeah. So it was oddly valuable. It's ambiguous, and again, you can unpack it a million ways through the lens of 2025. For Fanny it was huge that a man saw her as beautiful and it speaks volumes about our culture, about everything. Yeah but it's very poignant. 

I found a new hairdresser — I just took a gamble. I needed to be in a certain neighborhood and I just called this place up and I got this guy and I love him! I don't know, he’s probably in his fifties, a little plus size with this long, crazy curly hair. And he went, “Oh my God, you're doing Funny Girl.” And he quoted a line and said that as a child, it resonated with him and it gave him permission to be who he is. And he's never forgotten. And so I've been ruminating on that.

BWW: So what are you loving about Mrs. Strakosh?

CS: This is gonna really sound crazy, from the first time I saw the movie, I think I was like 12, I loved Mrs. Strakosh because I knew her. Mae Questel who did the movie, was the voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. She was a famous voiceover person who did commercials for Bluebonnet margarine where she was Aunt Bluebell. I said this at a talk back recently, I've always wanted to play Mrs. Strakosh. Every kid wants to play Fanny Brice, you know, but I wanted to play Mrs. Strakosh.

I guess it's like I sort of got it way back then where I was really headed. And so acting has been a blast. And I do play Ms. Brice on occasion. And I love that. It's an amazing role. And what Harvey Fierstein has done to this rewrite is extraordinary for the arc of that character. And so it's really fulfilling to do that as well.

So they're both fun. But I have to remember that I'm talking to myself because we have all the same scenes together. So when I go on as Ms. Brice, I have to make sure I remember that I'm not Mrs. Strakosh now and I'm looking at one of my other friend actors playing me. And I've done all this before, but in this show, it's challenging because we do so much together. So it's really crazy to flip on a dime and do one at the matinee and the other in the evenings.

BWW: Oh, wow. Yeah. And that provides you with an especially unique perspective on their relationship. 

CS: Yes. And it changes based on who's playing who. You know, my interpretation of Ms. Brice is different from Melissa's wonderful interpretation of it. And the people that understudy me, they're very different from me. So now all the relationships have changed. It’s fun. And that's what keeps it alive — we discover new things. And everything doesn't play exactly the same. But you find something new. And it's very exciting. Leah Platt plays Fanny Brice on most Thursdays and she's phenomenal. And so is Hannah. And it's a very different vibe, in places and relationships. This is the second year of the tour. So people take vacations and people get injured or get ill, have personal days. So there's a lot of in and out and all of our understudies are phenomenal. And so we really do get to get into a nice playground when things are mixed up. Every week, something's different. So it's fun.

BWW: You’re also an acting coach. What is the most important advice you've gotten and given about your craft?

CS: That you are enough. Yeah. And I heard it from others. I didn't invent it, but it resonated with me. I went to an excellent school and it was a phenomenal experience. However, at that time, there were teachers that told you you were doing it wrong. And it really immobilized me for a long time. I remember working on ANTIGONE and there was an acting teacher and we were all digging our brother's grave together. And he pointed to the woman next to me, who is a brilliant actress and has done wonderful work. And he said, “_____ doing it right and you're doing it wrong.” So that made me wanna teach. And I did have a minor in education in college, but I didn't pursue it because I went to go meet the class that I was going to be a student teacher for, like a week later at suburban Chicago and I saw this class of wild 12 year olds and it terrified me. And I said, I'd rather stand on stage naked in front of a thousand people than in front of these kids. I wasn't ready for it then. Yeah. They're teaching till much, much later on my own privately. And I feel like it's been an amazing opportunity. I teach classes as well. And I was at AMDA for six years, but I love the opportunity to undo that kind of thinking that there's a right and wrong way.

BWW: What else are you working on?

CS: I'm in the process right now of developing a musical about Rita Hayworth, who was horribly abused in this industry and stripped of her Spanish identity with raising electrolysis hairline and abused by men her entire life, starting with her father. So I think about that a lot too when I'm watching Fanny Brice and watching someone succeed on her own terms because Rita was so a part of the Hollywood system and just pushed from here to there by men. Kind of the opposite. So it makes me root for Fanny even more, but it makes me want to tell the story of Rita very badly because it's pretty unique too. We have a workshop this summer.

BWW: What is it that you want us to take away from the show?

CS: Oh God, just the love of the theater. That's what it's about. And the power of theater to change lives, to bring us out of sadness, to bring us to joy, to provoke us to think. It's such a piece about why we do this and why we come to see it. So it's about all of it. It's really about the theater, the power of it. And I hope we can hang on to it. In a way, it is about being uncensored. Fanny Brice did things that were outrageous. And you know, Ziegfeld saw the power of that. He could have censored her and said, you'll never do it that way again. When she does “I Am The Beautiful Reflection of My Love's Affection” playing the character pregnant, it surprises the audience and him. He says he's mad at her, but “you'll do it exactly the same every night.” Yeah. So she’s uncensored and allowed to express her gifts.

BWW: Is there anything else you might want to conclude with in terms of coming to Austin in the show?

CS: I can't wait! I’m looking forward to the weather, the people, the response from our audiences, I think they're gonna really, really enjoy it. It's for everybody. While it's about a certain period of time and a certain culture, it is an incredibly universal story. And we see that in every city we're in. So I can't wait to bring it in a few days.

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