Interview: For Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino, THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES is a Hometown Story

Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino not only wrote the book for “The Queen of Versailles,” she came up with the original idea for a musical about the billionaire Florida couple living their own version of the American Dream – building a gargantuan gilded palace – until the Great Recession of 2008 gets in the way.

A Florida native herself, Ferrentino had heard of Jackie and David Siegel, but it was only after seeing Lauren Greenfield’s award-winning 2012 documentary about them that she says she became “obsessed” with creating a musical about the rags-to-riches story of the onetime computer engineer who became Mrs. Florida, and mother to eight children, her husband, “The Timeshare King,” and their plan to build the biggest private home in America – a $100 million mansion inspired by the Palace of Versailles – outside Orlando.

Fast forward to the present, and “The Queen of Versailles” – with music and lyrics by three-time Academy and Grammy Award winner Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked,” “Pippin,” “Godspell”), direction by Tony Award winner Michael Arden (“Parade”), and choreography by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, and starring Tony and Emmy Award winner Kristin Chenoweth as Jackie Siegel and Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham ("Amadeus") as David Siegel – is now having its world-premiere pre-Broadway engagement at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre through August 25.

Ferrentino is prolific, with plays including “Ugly Lies the Bone” – produced more than 100 times worldwide including at the UK’s National Theatre and the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York – “This Flat Earth” (Playwrights Horizons),” and “The Year to Come” (La Jolla Playhouse), among others. Her plays have been translated into Spanish, German, and Portuguese and have been produced across the US and in London, Germany, Spain, and Venezuela.

Ferrentino is the recipient of the Arc’s Catalyst Award for Entertainment Industry Excellence for her writing centered on disability inclusion, as well as the National Arts Club’s Kesselring Prize for Playwriting, the ASCAP Foundation Cole Porter Playwriting Prize, the Paul Newman Drama Award, and the Laurents/Hatcher Citation of Excellence. She earned two MFAs in playwriting, from Hunter College and the Yale School of Drama.

By telephone recently from Boston, Ferrentino talked about “The Queen of Versailles,” getting to know Jackie Siegel, being part of a creative team that includes the legendary Stephen Schwartz, her two other 2024 world premieres, and more.

How did you first become aware of Jackie and David Siegel?

I’m from Merritt Island, Florida, in the Cocoa Beach area, which is near where the Siegel family lives. I remember being a grad student at Yale when David Siegel started buying up pieces of my hometown for timeshare developments. They purchased a big resort there and they also bought Cocoa Beach Pier, which was iconic in my hometown, and they were in the local newspapers a lot.

What made you think their story might work as a musical?

When I watched Lauren Greenfield’s documentary “The Queen of Versailles,” I became absolutely obsessed with it. I thought it would make a great musical because it was full of these characters who were larger than life in their ambition and the scale of what they were building and trying to do. It felt like an American myth playing out on such a grand scale. And I’m always interested in writing about Florida and telling its stories. I find Florida to be a great microcosm of everything that’s good and bad with this country. So I really became obsessed with that, in connection with this story.

What was the development process like?

I wanted to do this show for a long time. Securing the rights was quite complicated. When you adapt a documentary, you usually need documentary rights so you have to get the filmmaker to sign off, and then also the family. But you also want to make sure that you retain creative control. So there’s a lot of balancing to do, and it took a very gifted producer, Bill Damaschke, to be able to get us that.

During the show’s gestation period, did you always keep it in your back pocket?

I sort of kept it in all my pockets. Whenever someone said at the end of a meeting, “what’s the craziest idea you have?” my answer was always, “a musical version of ‘The Queen of Versailles.’” The idea found its way to my front pocket when I happened to have a conversation with Michael Arden, when we were seated next to each other at a dinner hosted by the National Theatre where they try to gather artists that they’re working with and interested in.

It was otherwise completely random. I’d never met Michael before and then he asked that question – “What’s the craziest idea you have for a musical?” – and I answered, “The Queen of Versailles”! And then we both got really excited about our love of Lauren Greenfield’s work and the lens it puts on American culture. So we decided to go after it together and found our way to Bill, who also shared our love of Lauren’s film, and then separately another producer put me in touch with Seaview, the theater, film, and television production company.

How did Stephen Schwartz become involved in this project?

Michael and I had put together a list of composers we both thought would be right for this show. When we were finally able to get the rights, Michael floated the idea of Stephen Schwartz. I remember very distinctly laughing in Michael’s face and saying something like, “Yeah, let’s start there,” never really thinking there was even a remote chance that we could get Stephen Schwartz.

We sent him the documentary to watch and he got back to us with a number of very specific questions, in terms of both tone and making sure that we had creative autonomy. We had a number of conversations with him ­– and then he sort of said no. It took another year to get the rights, though, and we went back to him again. He said he had read a number of my plays and watched the documentary again, and then he said yes.

What was your reaction to Stephen joining the creative team?

I screamed and screamed, ugly cried, and then pinched myself. It was incredibly intimidating to think I’d be working with him, but Stephen is a wonderful collaborator. From the beginning, he has never made me feel like I’m not his equal in this whole process.

What’s it like working with him?

It’s amazing – he’s so great at mentoring and collaborating. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the joy, playfulness, and friendship that would come out of it. I really enjoy sitting next to him, watching previews and nudging each other when things are working or jotting notes on each other’s pads when they’re not. I don’t think there’s a single word of the book that Stephen hasn’t had an opinion on, and I would have to say it’s been the same for me on the songs.

Were you a fan before you got this opportunity to work with him?

Absolutely. Maybe 16 or 17 years ago, I was a high school senior in a small town in Florida and a drama student, too, when my friend’s dad bought us tickets to see “Wicked” on tour. We drove three and a half hours across the state to Tampa to see the show. We had the worst seats in the whole theater – we couldn’t see a thing that was happening on stage – but we were in the house and we loved the show and the whole experience so much. I bought the CD of the original cast album in the lobby and we listened to it and the gorgeous voice of Kristin Chenoweth on repeat the whole ride home.

What does it feel like to be working with Kristin now?

I could cry just thinking about it. When I was 17, I knew I wanted to be a writer and I was already looking up to people like Stephen and Kristin, who is not only starring in “The Queen of Versailles” but is also a producer on the show. Now, to be doing for a living what I have so long wanted to do, and with people I’ve looked up to for so long, is really something.

I’ve heard Jackie Siegel described as “really something,” too. Tell me about your first in-person encounter with her? What is she like?

I had my first meeting with Jackie on the Cocoa Beach Pier in my hometown. I had been pursuing it for so long and so to actually meet her, where I grew up, was surreal.

She’s an incredible mix of things. What I love about her, and what I relate to her on, is that she’s this mix of high and low at all times. She’s always both. She’s building the biggest home in America but drinking coffee or soda from McDonald’s or somewhere, out of a styrofoam cup. And she has her own look, too. She’ll be decked out in designer brands sometimes, but wearing cut-off shorts and flip flops with feathers on them at other times. She’s lovely in her own way, not off-putting at all. She’s just genuinely who she is.

How did she react to the idea of a musical about her life?

She needed a little bit of persuading. I think it was quite out of the ordinary that this “girl from Florida,” as she likes to tell it, with long blond hair was meeting with her on the pier in Cocoa Beach over shrimp in a restaurant she owned. With all the randomness of that meeting, I don’t think she realized then that the idea for the musical was real.

I think Jackie likes telling her story and likes stories being told about her, so there was an interest, but I don’t think she actually believed it was going to happen. And we didn’t have Stephen Schwartz even remotely in the conversation yet so there was a long, long process still ahead at that point.

How did Jackie come to join you at the real Palace of Versailles?

I was living in London when the rights finally came through, after many years of waiting, so I planned a research trip to Versailles. Michael had been there the prior year and felt like there was a parallel story to be told about the building of Versailles, the French Revolution, and class disparity, and I felt it was important that I make my own visit. I texted Jackie to tell her that I was taking the train to France the next day. She was in Florida and texted back, “Oh, I’d love to come. I’ll see you there.” Lo and behold, she was there the next day with her children and members of her staff, and ended up touring the actual Palace of Versailles with me.

We were still in the process of figuring out exactly how the parallel story would fit into the musical. We had been very open with Jackie that it was our intention to use the building of the actual palace, leading up to Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution, as a framing device. But it was very, very surreal-meta – like, the truth is stranger than fiction – to be touring the actual Palace of Versailles with the “Queen of Versailles” herself from Florida.

I understand that she has also welcomed you to her palace in Orlando. What was that like?

At our first meeting, Jackie said, “If you’re interested in telling the story, you should come out and the see construction site.” I accepted her invitation and had been back a couple of times in the intervening years before going there with Michael and Stephen, and then more recently with Kristin. It was one of many out-of-body experiences I’ve had with this show to have Michael, Stephen, Kristin and the other producers fly into Orlando – this place where my grandparents lived, and the city that I’ve been flying in and out of for my entire life when I go home to visit my parents. Driving around Orlando with them was like nothing else I have ever experienced.

The house is still very much under construction. The family is not living there because it’s not in a livable state. It is taking so long to complete because it was in foreclosure for some time, and after that was over they had to go back and redo things. Then a hurricane wrecked part of it. It’s been sort of endless, because just as it seems they might come close to finishing it, another piece of it needs redoing.

In addition to “The Queen of Versailles,” there are two other world premieres of your work planned for this year. What can you tell me about them?

The first is a show called “The Artist,” which is based on the 2011 part-silent, part-talkie French film that won the Best Picture Academy Award, and which had its world premiere at Theatre Royal Plymouth. I co-adapted it with director and choreographer Drew McOnie. It’s technically a musical, but it’s more of a dance show. There’s beautiful puppetry, too.

We’re opening “The Queen of Versailles” on August 1, and then I head back to London for the world premiere of my play “The Fear of 13,” which will open in October at the Donmar Warehouse, starring Adrien Brody and directed by Justin Martin. That one is also based on a documentary that I love, also called “The Fear of 13,” which is the true story of a Pennsylvania man named Nick Yarris who was wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned on death row for 21 years before being exonerated.

I understand you will be directing one of your plays in the near future?

I have a number of things about to go into production that I can’t really talk about yet, but the one that has been announced is the feature film I’m directing for Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films, which is based on my play “Amy and the Orphans.” It will my debut as a film director. I’m not sure about directing theater, but I’m definitely interested in writing, developing, and directing my own work for film.

Photo captions: At top, Kristin Chenoweth and F. Murray Abraham in a publicity photo for “The Queen of Versailles.” Photo by Emilio Madrid. At left, Lindsey Ferrentino in a photo by Kathryn Page.

To post a comment, you must register and login.