Save this story Save Story Save this story Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine have been waiting to get Wanted to Broadway since 2018. Back then, the rollicking Broadway musical, which opened last night at the James Earl Jones Theater, was slowly being developed from Angelica Chéri and Ross Baum’s grad school thesis. Though LaFontaine had broken out as Deena in the West End premiere of Dreamgirls two years earlier, as Pfeiffer reminds her, she was intimidated to be co-starring with someone hot off the original Hamilton tour.
“Then on our first day of rehearsal, our voices blended like crazy and we had the same sense of humor,” LaFontaine remembers. “I was like, This is going to be my first New York friend .”
Their voices still soar divinely when combined—this is probably the best-sung show on Broadway right now—but the intervening eight years have been as winding as the musical’s inspiration: Chéri family lore that her great-great aunts Mary and Martha Clarke were able to pass as white in Reconstruction-era Texas and might have gotten into some outlaw hijinks.
Wanted has gone through its own transformations, from a title change (it was formerly Gun & Powder ) to significant retooling across two different stagings, starring either Pfeiffer or LaFontaine—never together. And the theater landscape itself has completely changed since the pandemic, in ways good and bad. What’s stayed firm is the remarkable talent of these leading ladies, whom time and hard-earned opportunities have made young industry veterans.
A few days before their big night, Pfeiffer and LaFontaine got together to discuss the show’s evolution, and how significant it is for them to be leading an original musical as performers who, like their characters, are mixed race.
Vogue : Does it feel like you’re in a different industry now from the one you walked into?
Solea Pfeiffer: There’s kind of a shift happening in the industry right now. A lot of development is starting in London before it comes here; a lot of shifting in the gestation process of musical theater at the moment. It’s strange. This season, this moment on Broadway… I think we’re going to learn a lot about the state of the art in the next few months. There’s so much Black art that’s happening all over New York, and at the same time, producers and the discourse are saying, “Broadway is dying, Broadway’s so alive, we’re grossing more than ever.” There are so many statements out in the ether about the state of musical theater, and whether it’s doable or profitable or worth it. Depending on how this season goes, I think we’re gonna learn a lot about who’s right about what.
Liisi LaFontaine: The stakes in everything just feel higher. I think we’re all still processing and unpacking the pandemic—and sometimes I can’t believe we have phrases like “pre-COVID” in our vocabulary. So much has changed, and the need for art and live entertainment has also changed. I think, right now, what we do is genuinely vital to the health of the country, giving people a space to go and feel something.
Pfeiffer: I think making art during a second Trump term feels pretty different. It feels strange to be doing “frivolous art” right now. Wanted is this combination of escapism and a very galvanizing statement about getting out in the world and remembering that freedom is not free. It feels amazing to be part of a show that is platforming such Black excellence and saying, Look at America . This little microcosm of a story is the blueprint for a lot of what we are experiencing.
The show hits all of these ideas without ever feeling like homework. The phrase I keep telling people is that it just feels like a “big, old musical.”
Pfeiffer: One of the first book musicals was Show Boat , which dealt with the exact same themes: a woman who is passing during the Reconstruction era. This is kind of the modern, centennial answer to all the questions raised by Show Boat [which premiered in 1927]. It’s just true to the form—this American story in this American art form, and it’s not pretending to be anything besides a big, old musical. At the same time, we get to really dissect these American traditions of assimilation and sacrifice. It feels like we’re contributing to the canon.
The show’s been in development for so many years. How have conversations around race changed in the room?
LaFontaine: Oh my God, the reckonings. I think the best part is that our writer is a Black woman, so naturally the conversations will be different than if it was anyone else in that lead role, a little more sensitive. Having a Black woman tell a story that is specifically true about her family, having a Black director [Stevie Walker-Webb], mixed-race people starring in the show, our choreographer [Chelsey Arce] is mixed race… It’s a very brown room, a very female-heavy room, and all the men in the room are very receptive. A lot of the men that we’re around these days, we say they feel like they’ve been written by women.
Solea and I have learned how to talk about our race and things we never even realized we needed to talk about. Last night at the stage door, we met this woman who’s in her 50s and is mixed race. She was crying to us talking about how complicated it is, how each generation, older and older, had less and less language. Us ’90s babies were born in this golden era where it was like, America’s on the up and up and race? We’ve never even heard of her. Obama’s coming. But I think about the Mariah Careys and the generations above us who had to either hide their Blackness or completely assimilate into one side or the other.
Pfeiffer: Miscegenation was literally a crime during our parents’ lifetime. Doing the show in 2018 and 2020, I remember it felt like an important development in feeling whole as a mixed person, and feeling that I didn’t have to dissect myself to make sense of myself. Now, as we’re seeing people have their citizenship questioned in the street based on look alone, there’s something really important about naming American whiteness. The Reconstruction era is when this American identity of whiteness was codified into law. Now, we have slave catchers in the streets doing this again—it’s like the American playbook. It’s nothing new and we don’t get taught this, or it’s getting written out. That’s what I think is so exciting about telling this story in 2026. All the roadblocks that pushed our timeline of getting the show to Broadway… like, Oh my gosh. But we get to do it now. We get to say something not just for the Black experience, but for anyone who doesn’t fit into that clear “American identity.”
You’ve both spoken about how meaningful it’s been to work on a show that acknowledges your own mixed-race identities. Has that been a grounding experience?
LaFontaine: This is the first time I’ve played a specifically mixed-race person. Any other time it’s been kind of open to interpretation. Dreamgirls is a very Black show. In Moulin Rouge! , I was considered the first Black Satine. There’s always this feeling of leaning into one side or the other, dependent on how people perceive you. I feel, in my adult life, there’s even less language for being mixed. As a kid, my parents made up words to help us identify ourselves, and it felt a lot more like there was space for both. But as I entered the real world, I was like, Okay, I’m just—I am a Black woman . It’s the one-drop rule: If you look Black, if you have a Black parent, then you are Black. And I’m down for it, I love being Black, but there is an erasure that happens to half of you. My dad’s white, my mom’s Black, and he passed when I was 14, so I really only had my Black parent around for my whole adult life. I didn’t realize how much I needed something like this to be able to fully self-realize.
It’s making me feel like a whole person instead of someone that’s been fragmented down into what makes the most sense. It is incredibly grounding and really special. It’s amazing to meet other mixed-race girls at the stage door who say, “This really got me.” Even if certain things aren’t being said, certain conversations we wish we could lean into a little bit more—just seeing it on stage, there’s so much that makes people see themselves. I think for anyone with a biracial heritage, there’s a very complex feeling of, Where do I fit in? The show asks that question over and over and allows us to find the answers. Being inside of it for so many years, it’s been amazing and complicated and hard sometimes, like maybe I want to stop thinking about this a little bit. But it’s really special to be able to play myself fully.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Who Shows Up—and Who Vanishes—When Your Kid Is in Trouble?
25 of the Coziest, Most Autumnal Movies to Watch This Fall
9 Adorable Photos of a (Very) Young Michael B. Jordan
Listen to The Run-Through with Vogue , a weekly podcast featuring the most exciting stories and hot takes from the worlds of culture, politics, sports and–of course–fashion
The Vogue Runway app has expanded! Update to the latest version to see all Vogue content, as well as new features like our Runway Genius quiz, Group Chats, and posts from Vogue contributors.
Become a Vogue Business Member —the ultimate resource for fashion and beauty industry professionals.
Never miss a story: Add Vogue.com to your preferred sources in Google.
Source: Lifestyle
0 Comments