Interview: Megan Hilty of THE DIAMOND SERIES At Feinstein's/54 Below

Feinstein's/54 Below debuted their DIAMOND SERIES two months ago to great acclaim, and ardent fans of Broadway stars Kelli O'Hara and Laura Benanti flooded the supper club for a unique night out, an elegant evening of fine dining, drinks, and world-class entertainment by some of the greatest, most glamorous women in the business.

For their third month of the series, the Midtown Manhattan Supper Club is offering a special evening with Megan Hilty, the Tony-Award nominated actress who has set up goals to conquer each corridor of show business, and who has been knocking those pins over, one by one. Having made her mark on The Great White Way, and starring in numerous TV shows, either as guest actor or leading lady, Ms. Hilty has also worked tirelessly on a voiceover career and is one of the most in-demand stars of the Symphonic Concert Stage.

So what does Megan Hilty think about the new adventure of playing the intimate club on 54th Street? Find out in this interview from Wednesday afternoon - one of the sweetest, most fun, and relaxed chats this writer has ever had with a celebrity. Indeed, talking about husbands, kids, quarantines, and the battle between sneakers and sequins, it was a talk like a couple of girlfriends catching up over tea.

So, dear readers, get a cuppa for yourself and get to know Megan. That's Mommy to Viola and Ronan.

This interview has been edited for space and content.

Hello.

Hi, is this Stephen?

It is.

Hello, it's Megan Hilty calling!

How are you today?

I'm good, how are you?

Oh my gosh, it's good to talk to you. I would never ever start an interview this way, but I'm such a fan. I can't believe I'm not fangirling already.

Oh my god! THANK you!! (Laughing)

So, how are you?

I'm so good, how are you?

How was the quarantine? You have little ones, don't you?

It was intense.

(Laughing) I mean, they're really little ones, aren't they?

Well, now they are four and seven... the quarantine started March 13th; my son - it was his third birthday. It was crazy. I went, overnight, from touring the world and singing for audiences that were sitting within close proximity of each other, to school teacher, at home, not going anywhere. It was quite a different life and one that I was not prepared for... I'm not equipped to be a teacher at all... certainly not for someone who's learning the building blocks of education, like reading. I taught my daughter how to read, which I am not equipped to do, you know? Luckily my daughter's teachers are amazing; we did the online learning, but they can only do so much, so I'm left to explain it.

But imagine in the years to come, the bond that that must've created for you and both of your children.

Well, I'm hoping so because I saw pretty quickly that it could go the other way too because it could be deeply frustrating for both of us at times. Both I and my daughter said that our relationship was too important to let the frustration ruin it. So we decided that if, at any point, it was getting too frustrating for either of us, that we'd say stop and we would put down whatever we were doing and just run around the yard, go do something fun, and then we'd come back to it because neither of us knew what we were doing.

I didn't want her to shut off because she thought that my frustration with my lack of... I'd like to think that I like the things that I've chosen to do with my life, that I'm somewhat good at. I was thrust into a position that I was just not good at it at all, so that was deeply frustrating, to begin with. I just didn't want her to see that or experience it or think that it had anything to do with her or my feelings for her. Do you know what I mean? It was crazy to navigate.

But the fact that you and ... do you say VIola or ViOla?

VIola. It's the Twelfth Night association.

The fact that you and Viola develop this protocol to protect everybody's good nature, that is already parenting skills supreme.

Well, we certainly put it into place.

Well, the good news is, it's over and we're kind of back to a normal world.

Yes! How are you doing? How has your life been there?

It's just me and my husband (Pat Dwyer) now. On March 13th, we went into quarantine and we did not come out for six months because we are both parked in the shade of 60, and having made it through the AIDS crisis, we weren't about to take any chances with an airborne virus. So we found out that we still really like each other after 38 years.

Ooooooooh, I LOVE that! A lot of people didn't fare so well (Laughing). I am really happy to hear that that was positive.

So you mentioned a second ago how you had been touring and singing everywhere. You are a major concert performer with symphonies, and now here you are making your debut at 54 Below, which is a smaller experience - how are you feeling about next week?

Really excited on many levels. This run at 54 Below, it's going to be special for many reasons. First of all, as you said, I've never played there before. This is 54 Below debut. I'm very happy to be doing it during the Diamond Series, which is more than just a concert, it's an experience - it's a four-course meal, three courses with hors d'oeuvres. It's not the typical 54 Below experience where you're kind of hustled in and hustled out because there's another show happening. We are the only event that evening, so you are supposed to enjoy your entire evening in that space. It's also November 2nd. Our opening night is my and my husband's wedding anniversary.

Yay!

It's our eighth wedding anniversary, and he's in the band, so we're going to make a big deal out of that. But also, I haven't been with my band since February, right before lockdown; I've been doing shows with my music director since this past July, but it's just been the two of us. So it's going to be a really joyous week for all of us because we used to travel around together everywhere, to Australia and London, and we all miss each other deeply. The way I build my shows is: I really want the whole point of them to be that you get to know the artists, aside from the characters that they play. And I thought the best way to do that, to see who I really am is to put me with my best friends. So, all of these musicians are my husband and my best friends, and we genuinely enjoy spending time and making music together. So this is a really big deal for all of us.

When you were growing up and had a dream of going into show business, it was all about looking at the characters that you would play and the plays that you would do. At that time there wasn't really a world where an actor could become sort of a rock star in this way, with a band, doing concerts. What has been your relationship with the evolution of live performance?

It's weird because I feel like everything in my career has been this awesome bonus that I never planned on because, in the beginning, I thought I was going to be an opera singer. I thought I was going to go into classical music, and that was my path. But like everybody else, you have these intentions and then other things start to unfold and you realize there's a huge world of opportunity out there, and if you want to go after these different things, you certainly can. And, earlier in my career, I sat down with myself and had a conversation with myself about what I wanted my career to look like. I started thinking about the people's careers I wanted to emulate. Not that I wanted to be any of these people, mind you, but the person that kept coming to my mind was my hero, Bernadette Peters - she really does it all. And I think that unlocking the key to longevity as a performer is not limiting yourself to one thing, it's really trying to get into as many different mediums as possible. She does not only musical theater, but she's a movie star, she's a TV star, she's a voiceover artist, she does concerts constantly, both with large and small venues; that was the inspiration. When it came to all of the other stuff it was a no-brainer, but when it came to these concerts, it really terrified me because I thought you had to have a beginning, middle, and end, a story where the audience learned something.

And I was like, "Ooh, I'm not equipped to teach anybody anything," (as I've established before) but then it became apparent that it's not about that. These shows are not about imparting any kind of wisdom - for me, it's all about getting to know that person as a person and not through the filter of any character that they're playing. That's when it became a much more approachable medium for me. And now it has become one of my most favorite things to do. It went from the most terrifying to I look forward to this, so very much.

How are you at rolling with the punches? When new things come rolling right at you, are you good at bending toward them or adjusting to them?

In which way? I mean, man, that could be taken a lot of different ways. Like, when the shutdown happened?

So in the business, because the business has evolved so much and there are so many new and different opportunities, when an opportunity comes your way that you weren't expecting, do you find that it's easy for you to say "Yes, I want to do this," or do you really take time out and think about it and discuss it with Brian? How are you at navigating that path?

Oh, I see... I think certainly as I've gotten older it's become a lot clearer. Because now I have more people to consider. I have my children - my children will have to deal with the fallout of whatever it is that I'm representing on a screen. Unfortunately, I have turned down a handful of things just because I don't want them to be horrified or have any kind of... (Laughing)... I want them to be proud of whatever it is that I'm doing.

That's nice.

And Brian too. I have this small group of people that, now, all of my decisions revolve around them.

That's beautiful.

So that's a lot more clear-cut, I guess.

On the subject of characters that you've played, you have, you have taken on some really heavy-duty jobs.

(Megan laughs).

I consider this pressure... having to play Doralee Rhodes, such a beloved character from the movies, having to play a version of Marilyn Monroe, not just once, but twice, having to play Patsy Cline, this is a lot of pressure. What keeps you centered and keeps you from flipping out when you have to go play one of these iconic, even legendary women?

If you really look at my resume, it looks like I'm just that foolish person that takes on roles that maybe they've been played by icons or they were icons, or they were made iconic by somebody else, and I'm just silly enough to take them on and see if I can put another spin on it. I credit all of this to my time at Wicked. It was my very first job out of college, and I was terrified because it was so big. I joined the Broadway company about nine months, ten months after it opened, and I was terrified. It was the standby for Glinda. A lot of people get this timeline kind of mixed up, people think that I worked with Kristin, but I did not. I came in right as she left and I was standing by for Jennifer Laura Thompson, who was just as much of a genius as Kristin. But I was so terrified that I tried to do a mixture of Kristin's performance and Jennifer's performance because I thought that's what my job was. It wasn't until the stage manager told me, "You need to stop watching the show and you need to go make this your own. That's what's going to make it." She gave me the room to do that and the permission. Cause I thought, as a standby, I was supposed to just kind of be a robot, you know? So I went back to the script and I was like, I can't do what Kristin does, I can't do with Jennifer Laura does, they're both just geniuses. And if I do try to do what they do, it's not going to be real. It's not rooted in anything inside of me. So how could I expect any of my performance to be moving or funny or anything because it's just kind of a shell, you know? So it was terrifying. I went back to the script and I tried to make it my own and make choices of my own. Within the realm of the show, I have to hit my marks and stuff like that, but in terms of intentions, I had to connect to it on a personal level, but still maintain those things that were set before me. So I was trying to find this balance of paying homage to the high bar that Kristin set, and filling the other fifty percent with myself and (and this was the hard part) telling myself that it was good enough.

So, realizing that I was going to let a lot of people down ... let's not say let people down ... but I'm not going to please everybody - people are going to expect Kristin Chenoweth and they're going to get what I bring to the table. And that's good enough. It was a really tough lesson to learn but I had four and a half years to really settle into that and be okay with it. And I think I took that with me from job to job, with that same mentality - I'm going to work as hard as I can to hit all of those things that really make this role what it is because of the people who have made it iconic before me. But I have to be okay with being different because I'm bringing myself to it. I hope I'm making sense.

I'll tell you something, I'm married to an actor, so I speak the language you're talking, and the lesson that you learned in those four years at Wicked, it has to have informed everything you've done since, because I saw Noises Off - you stepped so far out of the shadow of every other woman who's ever played Brooke - it was unforgettable.

Thank you so much.

And I'll tell you something else. I also saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

OH, YOU DID?!!

I did, and I'll tell you - I think about this at least once a week (Megan Laughs heartily): there was a moment in the play, I don't remember who said what to you, but your reaction was simply to go, "Oooooooooh!" - it was so brilliant that I've never forgotten it. (Megan is now laughing uncontrollably) So there it is.

I love that show so much. That is the one, I just didn't get enough time with it. I really wish I could have done it again, but I'm just so grateful for the time that I got.

Yeah, it was gorgeous. And that's coming from a boy who's loved Marilyn Monroe since he's ten years old, it was spectacular, what you did in that play.

Ooooh, THANK you! That's an interesting show because the person who originated it is Carol Channing. And then you have the person who made it Mega Watts famous in the film, Marilyn Monroe. Those are two wildly different performers. So, for that, I was like, "I wonder if I could find a middle ground and have a kind of homage to both ladies with one performance," and that was my whole goal with that one.

I think you broke new ground with it.

(Giggling) Oh, Thank you!

Rather than finding middle ground, I think you found your own ground. Now, I want to shift gears and talk about the fans of Wicked and of Smash. One play, one TV show, two different fan bases of enormity. What are the pros and cons of having such devoted fans?

Oh, gosh, I don't know how to answer that.

I don't ask the easy questions.

(Laughing) I don't know...

Do you get to interact with a lot of the fans?

With the theater, there's an accessibility that you just don't have with any other medium because you know where we're going to be after the show (Laughing) so that makes us way more accessible and, gosh, people just think they can say whatever they want to you after one of those shows, and with the film and TV and voiceover, it's all via social media, which I can't look at too often. I post stuff. I can't look at stuff too often cause it hurts my feelings; even if there's a sea of wonderful things, one or two negative things, I'm sad to say that I don't have a thick enough skin to let those roll off my back. Some people do (at least before the pandemic, when they could see my face) stop me and say lovely things, so that's lovely. I'm just grateful that anybody watches or listens to any of it.

You just mentioned your voice-over work. You do a boatload of voiceover work. Did you do a DIY home studio? Are you able to do your voiceovers from home or are you going into the studios these days?

It was THE saving grace during the hardest parts of the pandemic because, right before we went into lockdown, my husband got all of this recording equipment for his birthday. So we had all of this equipment, and I was already working on these shows for years before the pandemic hit. It's funny, cause a lot of people are like, "Oh, now that there's a pandemic, you've gone into voiceover," and it's like, no, no, no, this is a career I've been working on for fourteen years (laughing), this is not just a random choice. This is a passion. It just so happens that a lot of the shows came out during quarantine cause we've been working on them for years but I was so grateful because we had all of this equipment. We have a small walk-in closet that I was able to turn into a makeshift studio and it totally worked. It was our only source of income during the whole last year and a half, and the only reason we still have health insurance. So I am thanking my lucky stars that I not only had some kind of income and I was able to keep my health insurance, but it also made me feel like a person. So much of my personhood is what I do, as much as I'd like to think that I don't wrap my identity around my work, it's hard not to, so having those sessions and connecting with all of these creative people and having that creative outlet gave me this little slice of heaven - going into my closet and seeing all these people on zoom and coming up with these amazing characters and singing. I sang! I sing in almost all of them. So it's not like I stopped singing during the hard times of the pandemic, I was always learning new material and recording stuff. I'm deeply grateful for that part of my career because, man, it really saved us.

Do your kids like to sing with you?

They do! My daughter has this crazy ear, and I would listen to some songs to learn them, to record them, and she would overhear them once and a week later she would be singing them to me verbatim, memorized.

Hello!

Yeah. We're trying not to make a big deal out of it because we don't want that to be like, "Oh, this is how I get attention. So this is my thing." Let's let her have an opportunity to have other things. (Laughing heartily) But she really wants to get into the voiceover stuff. We're thinking about letting her start to audition for stuff in voiceover. I don't know. She's got an excellent ear though.

When it's time, it will present itself. So now you're coming up on the Diamond Series and I have to ask you about the gowns. You are one of the most glamorous women in the business. Every time you appear it's in some stunning ball gown or something that has lots of sparkle. How did you develop your sense of style when it came to the glamorous part of the business?

It's funny because I don't really think of myself as a glamorous person... but I do love these gowns. And when I started doing the symphony jobs, I would just look at the HUGE space and I'm just one person in this huge space, and there's a sea of exceptionally talented musicians behind me dressed in black. And it was like, "I want to wear something that says look over here!" I always tend to think of my gowns as fishing lures almost, know what I mean? (Both laughing) "Look over here!" And that's where it started, in the first symphony gigs. And I just love them, I love how they force me to hold myself in a way where I am... let's say I'm certainly not comfortable. (Laughing heartily) And I don't want to be when I'm on stage, I want to be a little uncomfortable, I want to be totally on top of what I'm doing and in control. And that's why I wear the shoes that I wear and wear the gowns that I wear. It puts me in a very different mindset, headspace, cause I normally like - if you look at me now and I'm in sneakers and a sweatshirt and jeans, they're not glamorous. It's either this outfit or the big ballgown covered in rhinestones that catches the light, that forces you to look at me. (Laughing) It's one or the other, there's no in-between.

Speaking of outfits, here's the most important question of the day. What are the kids wearing for Halloween?

Oh, we're all Harry Potter people. We started reading the series, and I had never read the books or seen the movies, until last January. So every night I read Harry Potter to them and we're almost done with a whole series - we're on the seventh book. So I'm Moaning Myrtle. The kids are Harry Potter and Hermione. And I think Brian is going to be Draco Malfoy. I love group costumes and I'm going to force my kids to do it as long as they'll let me. (Laughing)

Megan, that's our chat for today. I hope you have a wonderful time at 54 Below. I hope that you will come back many times because you are much loved.

Oh my goodness, Stephen, I'm so grateful for this time. Thank you for this wonderful conversation.

All right, my dear. Thanks for the visit. You're wonderful!

Bye now!

Megan Hilty THE DIAMOND SERIES plays Feinstein's November 2 - 7. Tickets are at the 54 Below website HERE.

Megan Hilty has an Instagram page HERE.

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