Interview with Kelli O'Hara
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Kelli O'Hara
Oklahoma-born actress and soprano who won a Tony Award for The King and I and starred on Broadway in The Light in the Piazza, South Pacific and Kiss Me, Kate.
Source: Playbill on YouTube
These answers are taken from Kelli O'Hara's My Life in the Theatre: From Light in the Piazza to South Pacific to Fallen Angels on Playbill's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What drew you to a career as a singer?
The first show I ever saw was Ragtime, and it was Marin Mazzie and Audra McDonald, and I said, I can do this. This is what I can do.
I'm either reincarnated, I thought about this a lot by the way, or my parents just so raised me on old films and musicals my whole life that it's just who I am. And I love it. Sometimes I'll read a Gershwin biography and I'll have actual pangs. They'll be in a salon in a brownstone singing songs, and I'll feel like I should be there. How do I get there? What can I do? And it'll hurt.
What was a great moment for you as a singer?
While I was doing Follies, I went on a lunch break to crash an audition for Sweet Smell of Success. When I first moved to New York, I got a small job at the Bridgeport Cabaret Theatre in Connecticut and met a guy named Eric Michael Gillette, who had done a reading of it, and he handed me his entire script and score and said, this is your part. It just so happened they decided to recast that part. So two years later, I took that script and that score and I went to Chelsea Studios and I banged on the door. I said, you have to see me, I'm your Susan Hunsecker. The guy sat down at the piano and said, our pianist has gone to lunch, I'm going to have to play for you. I said, okay, you'll do. I snapped at him to go faster because I was so nervous. And then I found out later that was Marvin Hamlisch.
I got to read in that final callback with an actor named Brian d'Arcy James, and I said, I don't care if I get the job, I got to do that. I ended up getting this job, and although the show wasn't a big hit, it was one of the neatest experiences of my life.
How did your career as a singer unfold?
I did the national tour of Jekyll & Hyde, directed by David Warren and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, and the tour was a blast. Then Sondheim's Follies. I consider this my Broadway debut. I understudied Heidi, Phyllis, and Sally, and I moved up into the role of Phyllis eventually.
Sweet Smell of Success closed early. I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought when you get a job, you get a job, and there was no severance package, nothing to support me. Then I went in to audition for a small part in a brand new musical by Ricky Ian Gordon and Richard Nelson, and they called me back for the actual role of Albertine, and I ended up getting it.
At Sundance they needed a place filler for a singer called Franca in a new musical called The Light in the Piazza, written by Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas. Ted Sperling had seen Sweet Smell of Success and said, yeah, she can sing. And that show would change my life. I played Franca in Seattle and at the Goodman in Chicago, and only when we knew the role would be going to someone new did I sing for it. And I ended up playing Clara.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a singer?
I am so proud that I won a Tony Award. It gives me such pride. The first time I ever watched the Tonys, I watched them because Kristin Chenoweth was going to win a Tony, and she thanked our teacher Florence Birdwell. I remember going, wow, she just got to thank Mrs. Birdwell in front of all these people. That is an amazing thing.
The first six times I was nominated, I didn't know about campaigning. By the time I get to The King and I, I'm proud of what I've done, but I know how to lose. I wasn't even nominated for a Drama Desk. I was certain I wouldn't win. I'd gotten really comfortable with that feeling of, this isn't what it's about, it's about my work. So when I won there was this incredible excitement. Mostly because I thanked Florence Birdwell, and because I thanked my parents, who had come and paid money, and we're not gazillionaires, to sit next to me every single time hoping that I'd win, even when I knew that I wouldn't.
Has your career as a singer progressed the way you expected?
When I played Clara, I was a little too old to be playing ingenues, in my opinion. I felt like I had a lot more to say. So when I had the opportunity to audition for something really different, something grown-up, something sort of fun and sexy and strong like The Pajama Game, I decided I would go for it. It was really hard to leave Light in the Piazza early. But that changed my trajectory. I think it did change my path, because I got to play someone who was a little bit more feisty, and I used a different kind of part of my voice. It wasn't always easy. I was definitely pretending to be my best old-fashioned belter.
I wasn't right, quote unquote, for a role like Billie in Nice Work If You Can Get It until I did something like Pajama Game, to be seen in a different way.
Of all the roles, songs and shows you have done, which is your favorite?
Days of Wine and Roses was 22 years in the making. When we were working on Light in the Piazza at Sundance, I said to Adam Guettel, I really love the way you write. I wonder if you might write something for Brian d'Arcy James and me, and I'm thinking of a movie called Days of Wine and Roses. Brian is my all-time favorite leading man. He's a special, special individual who makes me better. I was delving into stories that I really wanted to research and study and live inside, and I needed to be really safe with the person that I dove deeply with. It wasn't a commercial hit, but in my opinion, artistically, the most fulfilling thing.
Sunday in the Park with George is one of my favorite musicals in the world. There's a visceral reaction when I hear and experience this particular musical. What it means to be an artist. I often sing "Finishing the Hat" in my solo shows to remind me to pay attention to what's important: my family, my kids, my friendships, my marriage.
Who is your favorite singer, and why?
Marin Mazzie and Rebecca Luker, who have passed away, were so influential on my life, and still Vicki Clark, because they were sopranos. They were badasses. They were strong women who did not suffer fools easily, and I really took that as a template for myself. Audra, too.
I had gone back to see Kiss Me, Kate when Marin starred in it. Marin and I are very different, but I wanted to do Kiss Me, Kate in honor of Marin. It's the same reason I wanted to do the Ragtime concert. I wanted to stand in Marin's shoes. I did not want to play the role. I wanted to be her placeholder and just honor her.
Describe your style.
I came trying to do things like Jekyll & Hyde and Dracula, because that was what was popular at the time, but what I sang in my heart were things like My Life with Albertine and Adam Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon. Albertine showed me that I could be an actor and do musicals but also sing the way my body wanted to sing. Believe me, I tried to sing pop. I tried to sound cool. And when I finally accepted who I was, I started to work.
I auditioned for The Last Five Years, and Jason Robert Brown came out into the hallway and said, in so many words, I wish you could belt. And I knew that I couldn't. I wasn't singing the way everybody else was singing. So when he came back to me and said, I'm going to write the way you sing instead, it was one of the biggest gifts I've ever been given in my life. He found a way to make it make sense that Francesca would sound classical and from Italy and round and earthy, and I think still sexy and rich and strong. And I just felt alive.
Tell me about a song or a role that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
I was trying to have a baby, and by miracle I got pregnant, and it was right when I was supposed to be doing Bridges. I also happened to be doing Far from Heaven at the same time with Steve. Playwrights Horizons let me play a role while I was freaking eight months pregnant, a role about a woman who's not pregnant. It wasn't easy. It changed the story. It affected it. But I did it. Cathy Zuber made me a corset that had an opening for a belly that would grow.
Then Charlotte was born, my daughter, and we started rehearsals eight weeks later. So I waited all this time to do this show, and when I started the show, I was completely out of my gourd. I was postpartum. I was leaking. Sweet Steve Pasquale took me by the hand and said, we're going to make a love story out of this. And boy, did I not feel sexy. But I felt strong and I felt self-possessed and emotional, and the entire time we did this show, I felt proud that I was doing both things at once.
What is the biggest audience you have reached?
Peter Pan, completely live, just as they say it is, live on NBC. The Steadicam broke in the live production, but if you watch it, you don't see anything. I'm singing my song. The dog's right here. They go to side cameras. Another Steadicam guy comes in, they switch, they're running around. The whole time I'm just singing, probably sweating, trying not to change my affect. The dog never stops looking at me because I had that treat in my waistband.
But it humbles me, because we did the numbers. You would have to see that production of Peter Pan fully sold out, eight shows a week at the Gershwin, the largest theater, every night for 15 years, to have the same viewership that we had that night for NBC. So I love being a theater artist. But we're not famous.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
In South Pacific it was really not fun to wear a bikini. I got pregnant with my son and I still had to wear the bikini. I had to do all the cartwheels and all the climbing of the stairs until I was five and a half months pregnant with my son Owen. My memory of doing South Pacific will always be waddling around toward the end in my bare feet in a swimming suit, five and a half months pregnant.
I couldn't tell anybody. But Danny Burstein, we were very close, he's a father of two. We were standing upstage hiding behind a set piece, and I was growing everywhere, and he finally looked down a little bit and goes, what's going on? He was the first person to know besides my husband. It was early November 2008. Danny took my hand, we were on the stage hiding behind the truck before we come out for Act Two, and he said, your son will be born into an America with the first black president. Barack Obama had won that night.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
My career has felt like something where I just don't care if I fail. I just want to try. It's almost as if my entire life has been school. I thought about going back and getting my master's, but then I realized my school has been my work. If I can take a class in Shakespeare, if I can take some more opera classes, more and more acting classes all the time with more teachers, I want to do it all the time. I'm so proud of King Lear. I will always wear that as a badge of pride, and I hope to do many more Shakespeare plays.
I don't get to tell a love story very much anymore, and I'm probably going to tell less and less, unless someone writes a story for a bit of an older woman falling in love. Please. For some reason I'm in my era, especially on television, of playing really angry, sad ladies. Let's do some better writing.
Kelli O'Hara's Full Biography
Kelli O'Hara was born on 16 April 1976 in Elk City, Oklahoma, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for The Gilded Age (2022), The Accidental Wolf (2018) and All the Bright Places (2020). She has been married to Greg Naughton since 28 July 2007. They have two children.