The Millie producers were concerned. As the lead of a show, they told me, I was supposed to be “the mayor.” It was my job to set the tone for the rest of the cast, and the tone I was setting was somber. One producer even suggested I do a bagel Sunday so that the cast would feel my presence and support.
I was in a hit show and should have felt on top of the world, but I was anxious and unhappy. I began to isolate more and more in my dressing room. To be fair, I was doing it at home as well. Christian and I had been dating for almost a year by then and had already moved in together. My mother knew this but had not cut me out like she had done with Hunter. She just didn’t acknowledge that it was happening.
I began to worry. Had I inherited my mother’s antisocial genes? Could I handle everything that was happening? All the pressures of leading a company and doing eight shows a week? I felt like I was drowning. I knew I needed to make a change. I needed balance and perspective. The show was all-encompassing. I had nothing left in me to be a good girlfriend, or to even feel like my own person.
I needed help.
Millie previews began on Broadway in March 2002, and right away my mother began emailing me things she had read about me and my performance. She was rarely leaving the house by then. Her main link to the world was the internet, which was how she found message boards and forums on theater-focused websites like Talkin’ Broadway and the Playbill website. I would receive random notes from her, like “I read that you cracked on your last note of ‘Gimme Gimme’ last night,” or “Sheilaluvsbway thought you were great.” My curiosity couldn’t contain itself—I began to read the boards as well.
That was a mistake. I logged on to one site and did a search for Millie—the screen filled with a series of threads with subjects like “Unknown Understudy Takes the Lead,” followed by comments about how the producers were taking a giant gamble on me as Millie. We were in the preview period, in which actors get to work out all the kinks onstage before a live audience, leading up to the opening night. Critics don’t write about the show until that official date, but that doesn’t stop other theatergoers from offering their unsolicited opinions about what they saw. These forums give power to anyone and everyone—one comment emboldens others to pile on. I would sit and stare at the computer, telling myself not to look but unable to help it.
I could feel the pit forming in my stomach and the heat rising in my cheeks as I read things like: “She’s a joke.” “She’s terrible.” “They let her be the star of the show?” “It’s embarrassing.” “She should go back to the chorus.”
And I began to think that it was all true.
There were positive remarks too, which would buoy me, but a negative comment could send me plummeting. It was crazy-making. And it crushed me that my parents, who had not yet seen the show, would start forming their opinions about me based on what strangers thought. I was the lead in a brand-new Broadway musical—I wanted that to be enough. But I also felt the tremendous pressure to prove all the armchair critics and naysayers wrong, so I threw every ounce of myself into my performance. I danced and sang harder, and bigger, and louder. I would show everyone that I deserved to be on that stage.
One issue, however, was that I had not yet learned how to sing eight shows a week in order to preserve my voice. By Sunday, it would be trashed. I’d wake up Monday morning, my one day off, and it would hurt to talk. When my voice did crack one night, during “Gimme Gimme,” Millie’s big showstopping number, I panicked. Michael Rafter suggested I see Joan Lader, a voice teacher and therapist. She is well known in the business for helping singers recover from vocal cord injuries and surgeries, and teaches them to sing in a safe and sustainable way.
During previews, there was a ton of lead-up press—anything to drum up excitement about the production to sell tickets. The producers were pitching the “discovery of a new talent” story hard. As a result, in addition to an already rigorous performance schedule, I was doing interviews, photo shoots, and live TV. In the thick of it, I was invited to perform on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, which was a big deal. Everyone in the cast and production crew was excited, and I wanted to do my best. It was a Thursday morning, and I had done two shows the day before. When I woke up, I could barely speak. I had been here before, when touring with Grease, so I knew my vocal cords were strained. I had flashbacks to when I was put on a two-week vocal rest—this was less than two weeks before opening night.
I got to the Rosie set at nine a.m. and told the producer that I was afraid if I did the sound check I might not have anything left for the actual taping. I was paralyzed. I kept thinking, This is going to be a nightmare! I’m going to embarrass myself on live television. I knew my parents were watching and anticipated that the message boards would be brimming with “See, I told you so” comments.
I called Joan from my dressing room on set, and she warmed me up over the phone with several trills and vocal exercises. I was still doubtful, but she talked me off the ledge.
“You’ve got this,” she said. “Use your breath. Anchor your body. Your legs are tree trunks. Shoot your roots through the ground. Use your entire body, not just your voice. Your entire body. Your back, your arms, your gut. You have power and reserve within every cell. Use it.”
I took her advice and used every ounce of my being to sing “Gimme Gimme.” I felt like I barely eked it out, but at the end, Rosie said to the audience, “Can you say, ‘Tony Award’?”
I was just so relieved to have pulled it off that I couldn’t even let that resonate.
I knew by then that my parents weren’t going to make it for opening night. It was originally meant to be in the fall, but then September 11 happened and the entire country came to a standstill. My parents had moved to Florida by then, and my mother’s agoraphobia was in full effect; 9/11 gave her a good excuse for being even more terrified of leaving home. She was completely rattled by the experience. The terrorists had learned how to fly planes in Florida, both her children lived in New York City, and the news was filled with stories of men boarding planes with explosives in their shoes and anthrax being mailed to random people. The outside world became an even scarier place, and my mother used all of these reasons to stay home. Still, I always had this sliver of hope that she would say, “Sutton, nothing would stop us from coming to see you in your big break!” Instead, she seemed exasperated that I would even ask.
When opening night finally came, I found myself sitting center stage on a black-and-gold-striped pouf about to sing “Gimme Gimme,” when the floodgates opened up and I was overcome by all the fears I’d had leading up to that moment. My voice felt strong, and based on the crowd’s applause and laughter so far, it seemed like the show was well received. Yet, just before I began to sing, all I could think was: I want my mommy.
I made it through the song, and as I flung my arms in the air and hit that last high note, I could hear Christian shouting “Brava!” above the raucous clapping and hollering. I felt the warmth of friends and colleagues who had come to cheer me on—my agent Steven was there, as was Mr. Bodick, my high school drama teacher, who had flown in from Detroit to support me. Hunter would have come, but he was in Urinetown, performing down the street that same night. My parents weren’t there, but I was still surrounded by love and support.
After the curtain, Christian came backstage, beaming. “I guarantee the reviews will say, ‘A star is born!’” he declared.
Everyone felt great about our opening—after all that hard work, we pulled it off!
And then the reviews came out.
Some papers loved it, but others were dismissive, including the New York Times. Their lead theater critic, Ben Brantley, was not a fan, and his opinion mattered. He didn’t single me out, but his dismissiveness stung. He had issues with everyone and everything—including, apparently, my teeth. Another reviewer wrote something along the lines of “When she gets to her second act number ‘Gimme Gimme,’ all I could think was, get the hook!” That hurt.
The day after the opening, I stayed in my apartment with all the blinds closed, sitting on our blue Jennifer Convertibles couch alone. That pit in my stomach had grown bigger than me—I felt like I was being swallowed by it. I thought I had let everyone down, that the producers made a mistake. The forums were right: they had gambled on an “unknown kid,” and it had backfired. Why did they pick me? I was Millie, the girl on the playbill as well as every NYC bus and subway poster—and on the marquee of the Marriot Marquis Theatre, where I had just made a fool of myself. The show was going to close, and it would be all my fault. Going back to perform that night took every ounce of energy I had left. It reminded me of how I felt when I returned to work after my Will Rogers panic attack. I had to get up and go do my job, but it was brutal.
In the past, I had turned to cross-stitch, or crochet, or collage to help ease my anxiety—but this time, I started drawing.
Early on in our relationship, Christian had given me a set of colored pencils and a sketchpad. “You’re an artist,” he said. “You should take your doodles more seriously.” Those gifts became my lifeline. Before then, I had never thought that the circular doodles that filled the margins of my notebooks were art. I was touched that he did, and I began to channel that belief onto a blank piece of paper. I started with a black pencil and made small circles on the page. I had no plan. It was all an experiment. I started in the center and the circles began to grow like a web, small swaths of interconnected bubbles emanating from the core, infiltrating the page. I grabbed a blue colored pencil and began to color in a few holes, then switched to a deeper blue, then a lighter one, so these small clusters appeared. Allowing my mind to wander, I grabbed another color at random. Blues became purples, then reds, and the shapes began fingering out from the center of the page in alternating colors of the rainbow, swirling like DNA strands.
When I was finished, Christian framed the drawing and hung it proudly in our apartment. It was the best gift anyone had ever given me.
I was inspired to make another.
My second “real” drawing was of a giant golden sun. I used the same circle style, so that each ray was made up of a cascade of yellows and oranges, small dapples emanating against a rainbow sky.
I was searching for light.
Soon I began sharing my art with Julien Havard, my dresser on Millie. That relationship is so intimate—a dresser helps you with the quick changes between scenes, hooking your bra or literally holding up your pantyhose as you slip them on. Julien and I were just getting to know each other—the beginning of a lifelong friendship—and he saw how hard I was working onstage and off. He was an artist and had started sharing his art with me, these beautiful, colorful pop art drawings, often with naughty hidden images of a penis or marijuana joint. I brought my sketchpad and pencils to work one day, and we started drawing together. He used Copic markers, a professional-quality brand of paint pens, and eventually gave me my first set. In between shows, we would sit and sketch on the floor of my dressing room while supping on spaghetti Bolognese from Daniela’s. Those calm moments helped me draw a line between Millie and myself. They gave me something to do beyond worrying about what the critics or message boards or my mother thought about me or my performance.
In May, after I had finished a matinee, a producer popped her head into the dressing room and said, “Congratulations! You won the Outer Critics Circle Award!”
I thought I was being punked.
Then I won a Drama Desk Award. Then an Astaire Award. When I was nominated for the Tony Award for best lead actress in a musical, the whiplash felt the most intense. The critics may have been unsure about the show, but the audiences loved it. It was a love letter to New York—and after 9/11, it was exactly what people wanted to see: a fizzy, good-natured show about a young girl with a big heart and big dreams. My dressing room was filled with flowers from people like Shirley MacLaine, who sent a card with her bouquet that read, “From one understudy to another,” as her story mirrored mine with The Pajama Game. Julie Andrews, who played the movie version of Millie, came backstage, too, as did Julie Lamar, who showed up with a scrapbook of clippings that she had saved of me since I left Will Rogers. She had been tracking my career and was so proud of me and how far I had come. Every award was a revelation that boosted me, but the Tony nomination was a catapult. When I learned that news, I flashed back to seventeen-year-old me sitting cross-legged in my beanbag chair in Michigan, watching the awards ceremony with my mother. Fast forward a decade, and here I was at twenty-seven, running around to find a dress and shoes to wear to the very awards ceremony that put me on the path to this moment! It was such a rush.
The Tonys are always on a Sunday. The camera run-through for each show that had been nominated for best musical was from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at Radio City Music Hall. The Millie cast was performing “Forget About the Boy,” so I was dressed in my purple 1920s dress, with my brunette bobbed wig. My brother was there with Urinetown, a postapocalyptic musical about corporate greed that had also been nominated for a slew of awards.
We rehearsed our number, went back to the theater for a matinee, then turned around to go back to Radio City Music Hall for the ceremony.
Christian met me at the theater. I have a beautiful photo of the two of us walking down the red carpet—he was just glowing with pride. This was a night both of us had dreamed of, the ultimate celebration of theater and Broadway. We found our seats: fourth row, on the aisle. It was wild! And he was amazing. My cheerleader and champion.
At some point, early on in the evening, a runner came to get me for our performance. Julien was waiting for me backstage to do the quick change. I slipped out of my black strappy gown and into my purple twenties dress as my hairdresser, Darlene, put my hair in pin curls and slipped my brunette bob wig on. Just as I was applying Millie’s signature red lipstick, I heard Bernadette Peters introduce the performance: “New York City is always changing,” she said. “But one thing remains constant. Young people filled with hunger and hope arrive here every day to make their dreams come true.”
It was a complete out-of-body experience. I was trying so hard to be present, but I couldn’t keep up with all the feelings: excitement, nerves, terror, giddiness.
Julien said what he still says today before I go out on the stage: “Nice and easy.”
The curtain was still drawn as we all assembled onstage. I took my seat behind the row of desks that had been set up, each with an old-fashioned phone on it. Just then, I saw someone run across the stage—it was Gregory Hines!
“Knock ’em dead, girls!” he said with a huge smile.
The curtain rose, the prop phones started ringing, and I launched into the opening line: “No canary in a cage for me!”
“Forget About the Boy” erupted into an exuberant tap dance number where we all burst from our desks and formed two tapping, stomping, and sashaying lines that grew as the whole cast came out to join us for a reprise of the song “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” We finished with a final hard tap and outstretched arms. As I stood next to Gavin Creel, the actor who played Millie’s love interest, for that final pose, I took it all in. I was on the stage at Radio City Music Hall with many of the same people I had learned lines with in La Jolla a year and a half earlier. The audience burst out in applause, and I started crying. I was so proud! Of this moment, this cast, and this show. It wasn’t embraced by all the critics, but it resonated with audiences, and this moment reminded me of that. I cannot tell you how many people have told me they saw Millie and wanted to move to New York, do musical theater, become an actor.
Hunter performed after me. He was the lead on “Run, Freedom, Run!,” the song the cast of Urinetown performed. At the end of it, he pointed at me and I pointed back at him. Two kids from small-town Georgia suddenly performing at the Tonys together, our misfit dreams realized.
A little bit later, one of the runners alerted me that best actress in a musical was next. All I could think was, I hope my shoes don’t trip me up. The buckles kept catching in the lace hem of my dress. It’s so funny how the smallest anxieties can be the focus in such big moments.
Doris Roberts and Jerry Orbach came out on the stage to read the names of the nominees for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical. I was up against Nancy Opel and Jennifer Laura Thompson from Urinetown, Louise Pitre from Mamma Mia!, and Vanessa Williams from Into the Woods.
I took a deep breath.
A week earlier, Dick Scanlan, the book writer and lyricist from Millie, had come to my dressing room and said, “Do you have a speech prepared?”
I most certainly did not! My Southern humility would never let me be so bold. In fact, when I spoke to my parents the morning of the Tonys, my dad didn’t say, “We’re so proud of you!” or, “You’re a star in our eyes no matter what happens!” He said, “Don’t get your hopes up.” I know it sounds mean, but I also know they were scared of me getting hurt.
Funnily enough, when I heard my name called, I was oddly calm. The next thing I knew I was walking up the stairs, holding my dress so it wouldn’t snag on that darn buckle. Someone handed me an award, I can’t even remember who.
I am so grateful that Dick wrote a speech and gave it to me the day before the ceremony—and that I more or less remembered what he had written down, which began, “To say that I am honored is an understatement.” It was. I was in disbelief, but my delivery was calm. I wasn’t crying or screaming. I thanked the entire cast and the producers and directors for taking a risk on hiring me. I made a point of mentioning Mr. Bodick, who again had flown from Detroit to be there, and Julien. I gave a shout-out to my brother—I could feel him beaming at his baby sister from the audience. And, of course, I thanked Christian, who was so proud. My parents were on that list too. I knew they were at home watching me. I thanked them for all their support for my dreams. That was the real hitch that night, more than the buckle on my shoe. They had so much to do with why I was there, and yet they were not there.
Still, I was floating in giddy disbelief when we went to the Tonys Awards Supper Ball at the Plaza Hotel afterward. Honestly, I don’t remember a thing about the party, but I do remember going with Christian to Vintage, our favorite midtown bar, and ordering pizza. We stayed up until four having drinks with all our friends who had been watching the awards from the bar and waiting for us to arrive. We had just moved to a new apartment on Fifty-Fifth Street—which was still empty but for our bed and a couch. That was where I finally looked at my cell phone and saw that I had forty-five voice messages (this was before texting was a thing).
I lay on the empty floor in the dark, still in my Tonys dress, listening to all these voices from my past: Alice Ripley, who played Fantine in Les Miz, called to congratulate me. So did Mr. Bodick: “Did you hear me shout when they called your name? I’m so proud of you, Sutton!” There were even messages from old friends from my Memphis days. And one from my mom and dad saying, “Congratulations!” and “Don’t drink too much.”
I finally felt like one of those girls I liked to draw: floating and free.
I didn’t want to go to sleep that night! I didn’t want the magic to go away.
My parents finally came to see me in Millie that summer. I was so nervous! Even though I had won the Tony, I still felt like I had to prove something to them. I also knew that being in the city, post-9/11, in a packed theater, made my mother extremely uncomfortable—but she came.
They drove all the way up from Florida and stayed in Atlantic City, so they could spend time at the casinos. They came in on a Saturday morning for the matinee, and I got them a hotel room in the Marriot Marquis so they could order room service instead of having to go to a restaurant. Julien went to meet them in the theater after the show and brought them back to my dressing room. They brought me a Cinnabon and caramel corn that my dad had bought at the Atlantic City boardwalk. They weren’t overly effusive—but I think they liked it. Then they left and drove right back home.
I didn’t know then that it would be the last time my mother would ever see me on Broadway. They didn’t come see my apartment, or ask to see Christian. My mother still refused to acknowledge his existence.
It was around then that the producers confronted me about my unsociable behavior and suggested I host a weekly bagel brunch. By then, I had become friends with Jeanine Tesori, Millie’s composer, and I shared with her some of how I was feeling. She gave me the number of her therapist, Joanne, which began a nine-year journey of detangling myself from the web of my mother. I did not yet understand how warped my mom’s lens was, or how it distorted my own point of view and experience.
My mother was never officially diagnosed, but Joanne thought she had a character disorder as well as agoraphobia. I looked up character disorders online, and read that they’re defined by difficulty behaving in socially acceptable ways, including maintaining healthy relationships with others. That resonated. I also researched agoraphobia. To summarize the Mayo Clinic’s definition, it’s a type of anxiety disorder in which you’re so worried about situations that might make you feel “trapped, helpless, or embarrassed”—and the panic attacks those situations might cause—that you stop engaging with the world in order to avoid them. It’s hard to treat agoraphobia, because in order to get better, you have to face your fear. I knew my fear was becoming my mother. What was hers?
I vowed to stop reading reviews and asked Christian to block the message boards on my computer. I begged my parents to do the same, but my mom insisted it was her only way to keep tabs on me and Hunter.
“Mom,” I said, exasperated, “why do you want to read horrible things about me and Hunter online?”
“They don’t say horrible things about Hunter,” she replied.
I kept that sun drawing I’d made hanging in my dressing room, a reminder to seek light, always. And then I wound up hanging the very first drawing I made, the one Christian had framed for me, in my debut art show, a few years later.
I called that piece “Crazy Family DNA.”