Caissie Levy Is the Ultimate Mother

Places, please for ELLE’s column Showstoppers, where theater’s biggest stars reflect upon the moment in their careers where the famous phrase “the show must go on” became a little too real. When things don’t go according to plan onstage, here’s how the pros react—and what they take away from it.

This month, Tony nominee Caissie Levy, who currently stars as Mother in Ragtime, talks about technical difficulties when she played Elsa in Frozen on Broadway and moments when audience members spoke out. She also shares how she balances motherhood and performing, the buzz around the West End’s Next to Normal, and her nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Ragtime.

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Her biggest “The show must go on” moment

There have been all sorts of mishaps in different shows I’ve done that you power through, and then afterwards you have a really good laugh or maybe a little cry about. In Frozen, there was a time when my glove and my cape didn’t fly [during “Let It Go”], and they just fell on the stage. By the time I was circling back to go and do the quick change of the dress on stage, all the wires that had been rigged and hadn’t flown got wrapped around my legs. I couldn’t move. We had to stop the show and restart to get me untangled. It was painful physically and emotionally.

There were times when the dress didn’t come off. There were two crew guys pulling the dress off in the basement, and they were amazing, but when that happened, I would have to muscle my way out of it and rip the magnetic dress off myself, because for whatever reason, the rigging didn’t work. It was a real team effort. There’s no A.I. and there are no robots. Sometimes, stuff just gets messed up, and you still have to keep on going.

Broadway actors and company members, we’re athletes. There is a huge amount of trust that has to go into it in order for all the departments to create the magic, and there is a risk involved. But thank goodness, we have such an incredible crew and artists backstage, beneath the stage, and out front keeping us safe. The stage managers on Broadway are such heroes.

There were certainly those moments in Frozen, but there are moments all of the time. Sometimes, the audience decides to talk back to you. There’s been quite a lot of it at Ragtime actually, because I think it elicits such strong reactions from people. Because of the state of the country and the world right now, I think emotions are so high that when these characters are having these very high drama moments, sometimes, the audience feels compelled to say something. We try to have grace for these things, because this is the magic and the mess of live theater. It certainly jolts you into the present moment. You move through it. You keep going. That’s the thing about theater that I’m addicted to, for better and for worse. It’s live. That is so wild. It’s never lost on me how insane it is what we do. When we rise up on that elevator as a company every night in Ragtime, it’s like here goes nothing.

I feel that from the audience too, because they’re taking in this huge epic story, and they’re coming in with certain preconceived ideas about their opinions on the world and their thoughts and feelings. They’re quite changed by the end, or at least more open. That only happens in that exchange between company and audience. No matter how many years I’ve been doing this, I still get that jolt. It’s a thrill.

On her Tony nomination

My God, it’s so crazy. After 20 years of no awards or nominations, I’m getting all of this attention, and it feels absolutely nuts. I feel very grateful, and it’s also very out-of-body. It means more than I even thought it would. It’s a beautiful convergence of a lot of really wonderful things.

I get so much satisfaction out of doing [Ragtime] every night. There’s the element of working with people in the company who I have long admired or been really close to personally. And then, having the ability to share this with my husband, [David Reiser] who’s been by my side every moment of the last 20 years of my career, and me for his. It’s not just the recognition or the fanciness of it all and the dressing up, which is all a blast, but it’s also the acknowledgement from the community that I feel like I’ve poured my whole life into. To have that love come back at me in this way feels really, really special and beautiful. Every room I’m in, it’s full of people I’ve worked with or worked for or admired and want to work with. When things happen to people early in their career, it’s exciting and thrilling, but maybe not as deep. Now that it’s happening to me at this point in my career, I feel very able to appreciate how special it is.

On Ragtime’s transfer from New York City Center Encores! to Broadway

I knew it was going to be a happening and an event because my generation, we grew up with the original production of Ragtime. It meant so much to musical theater. I knew that doing it at City Center, straddling the election, was going to be a big wow moment.

But, I was literally home for 10 days post Next to Normal [on the West End]. I’d never done Encores! before, and it also felt like extra loaded, because Next to Normal had gotten such a huge amount of praise both in the U.K. and here. It was very much just jumping in with both feet and having this insanely fast rehearsal period, which I found incredibly stressful. I was just in survival mode. I was like, “Let me try to get inside of this character as quickly as possible and enjoy this particular chapter.”

The fact that it then went on to have the impact it did and translated to this Broadway run certainly was not something I anticipated. Every new bit that has unfolded has just topped the last.

On departing The Lost Boys, which is nominated this season for Best Musical, and staying in Ragtime

It was a lot of juggling at first, because they didn’t know with Lincoln Center’s season where Ragtime was going to be programmed. At the time, I was very invested in The Lost Boys, because I’d been developing it for a few years. I had already committed, and very excitedly so, to do it in the spring.

I had told Lear [deBessonet, Ragtime’s director] and the team at Lincoln Center Theater that I would die to get to continue playing Mother. I would just have to do it in the fall. When that materialized, that was the greatest gift, and then began a huge juggling act of just figuring out what that would look like. Both Lincoln Center and the team at The Lost Boys were unbelievable about that, and we somehow figured it out.

Then, of course, motherhood came into play. My kids had a very difficult start to the school year, and it became very obvious in a matter of weeks that there was no way I could go back into a [rehearsal] process [for The Lost Boys] and basically be gone for three months straight from my kids’ lives. Everyone again was unbelievably amazing about it and helped figure out the best solution.

I do think that that’s down to the relationships, and the years and years of working with people, and trying to surround myself with wonderful humans in this business who I’ve been so lucky to be with. They all rallied and pivoted. It all worked out for everyone and then some. I’m literally counting my lucky stars every day.

On having help with child care amid her busy rehearsal schedule

It’s nuts, and I commute too. I’m very fortunate to have this support system that definitely is integral to making a Broadway schedule work. The babysitters and nannies of the world, they are the heroes of my life, truly, and they always have been. Since I had my son, who was one when I started doing Frozen, I’ve had past students of mine become little sisters who have helped me with my children.

These young women have literally enabled me to have a career and have a child and be a parent at the same time. I am always all about lifting up the babysitters and the nannies and the sort of tribes that we lean on to help raise our kids. To get to raise kids in this environment is so amazing, to have them backstage at the theater and have all these aunties and uncles in the cast and crew. It does take a whole village of people to help you do it.

On playing Elsa in Broadway’s Frozen

I was definitely winning aunt points during that time, because all my friends’ kids would come. I would put Elsa’s sparkly cape on them, and they got to try on my shoes. It was magic. My son grew up backstage there. I did that show for the first three years of his life. So he just thought I was Elsa. He just didn’t realize I was an actor.

On playing Diana Goodman in the acclaimed West End production of Next to Normal

It’s the hardest, most satisfying thing I’ve ever had the chance to work on. It’s a role I would revisit in a minute and without hesitation. It’s a huge lift, and it would be a lot to manage with my family and life, but what role isn’t when you go all in? People, I think, really want to fabricate some sort of master plan that no one’s divulging, but the reality is just that there are no plans currently for it to have a New York run, at least our production of it. I’m not privy to any information, but it was the role of a lifetime and that experience was utterly magical and fulfilling on so many levels.

The advice she’d give her daughter, who’s interested in theater

The thing I wish I understood sooner when I was starting out, but I try to instill in people no matter their age and actually no matter what they’re going after in life, is this idea of not looking left and right and just staying on your path. It’s easier than ever right now, within the age of social media, to just compare. It can really get you down, and it can really mess with your sense of self.

The moment I started to really come into my own is when I embraced my uniqueness and stopped trying to emulate all the girls a few years ahead of me. It’s so important to have role models, of course. There are going to be people that inspire you and that’s super valuable. But as soon as you can drop into yourself, that’s when the exciting stuff starts to happen. That’s when you realize what you’re offering is not in competition with anyone else. You’re just bringing your uniqueness to the work. That is the thing that gets you hired. You can honor the writing and bring yourself to it, then you’re never in competition with anybody else, and then you are free. That’s what I hope for my kids, no matter what they pursue, whether it’s the arts or something else. I just hope that they drop into who they are, because that’s the key to success for sure.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.