In ‘Death Becomes Her,’ Jennifer Simard Turns Ache Into Energy As Broadway’s Undead Diva – The Boston Courier

Almost twenty years after her Broadway debut, Jennifer Simard has discovered a job she’s come to view as a “wonderful retrospective.”

The 2-time Tony Award nominee stars as Helen Sharp, one-half of the diva duo within the musical adaptation of “Death Becomes Her,” which opened in November at New York’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Her delightfully side-splitting, excessive camp efficiency has garnered sterling critiques and is anticipated to nab her a 3rd Tony nomination within the spring.

“When I look at the arc of Helen Sharp as a character … I see similarities to myself as a human being, and I see a bit of every character I’ve been fortunate enough to play,” Simard instructed HuffPost. “It’s real ‘pinch me’ stuff. I love Helen Sharp, and I love this time I get to dance with her a bit.”

Based mostly on the 1992 film, “Death Becomes Her” follows actor and singer Madeline Ashton (performed by Megan Hilty), whose profession is on a downturn after years on the theatrical stage. Out of desperation, she invitations a long-forgotten frenemy, author Helen Sharp (Simard), and her fiancé, beauty surgeon Ernest Menville (Christopher Sieber), backstage after a efficiency.

True to kind, Madeline seduces Ernest, thrusting Helen into an emotional breakdown ― depicted within the musical by “Madeline,” Simard’s Act 1 showstopper. Helen then strikes a Faustian discount with a mysterious socialite, Viola Van Horn (Michelle Williams of Future’s Youngster), who brews her a potion that guarantees everlasting youth.

Helen, nonetheless, quickly realizes that Madeline has additionally sipped Viola’s potion ― thus making certain there can be no finish to their rivalry.

Thirty-three years after its launch, the movie model of “Death Becomes Her” is greatest remembered as a star car for Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep. It additionally broke contemporary floor by skewering the myriad methods ladies nonetheless discover themselves in a no-win state of affairs when it comes to getting old within the public eye.

In 2025, these themes are on the heart of the Broadway revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger, in addition to the lately launched horror movie “The Substance,” by which Demi Moore portrays a fading Hollywood star who goes to lethal extremes to look youthful.

Simard, who made her Broadway debut in 2007 when she joined the forged of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” acknowledges she’s been on the receiving finish of that discourse.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase, ‘Wow, she’s let herself go,’ followed by, ‘Ooh, she’s had too much work done,’” she defined. “So it’s important for women to reject that narrative.”

“I don’t think this is the beginning of that storytelling, nor do I think it will be the end,” she continued. “My outlook on it is this: Whatever you choose to do or not to do to make yourself feel good is 100% percent your business and no one else’s.”

One notable change in adapting “Death Becomes Her” for Broadway is the removing of a sequence by which Hawn wore a fats go well with to depict Helen at her most despondent.

Simard, who has spoken publicly about her expertise with anorexia, stated she and e-book composer-lyricists Julia Mattison and Noel Carey and e-book author Marco Pennette have been in full settlement about scrapping the scene in favor of extra physique optimistic methods to relay her character’s interior turmoil.

Watch a clip from Broadway’s “Death Becomes Her” beneath.

“I know what it’s like to have my heart broken. I know what it’s like to have a man stolen out from under me,” she stated. “I’ve always used humor to cope with my pain, and doing it onstage is no different. It helps me heal every single night.”

A Litchfield, New Hampshire, native, Simard fell in love with theater after she noticed a efficiency of “Fiddler on the Roof” when she was 4 years outdated. At age 9, she landed her first skilled position in a manufacturing of “The Wizard of Oz,” after which she was wanting to pursue a profession on the stage.

She felt additional impressed by watching Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan and Betty White on “The Golden Girls” together with her grandmother, and continues to rejoice these late actors’ legacies on “The Golden Girls Deep Dive Podcast,” which she co-hosts with writer Patrick Hinds.

And like Arthur, Getty, McClanahan and White, Simard hopes to pursue extra movie and tv work shifting ahead. In actual fact, she’d soar on the probability to co-star with Hilty ― beloved by viewers for her portrayal of Ivy Lynn on the NBC sequence “Smash” ― in a future display challenge.

“It’s so fun to stir the waves of comedy with her,” she stated. “We take the extra step to be there for one another. We choose every day to love one another, and that’s why why we work so well onstage.”

She went on to notice: “Who knows, maybe there can be ‘The Megan and Jennifer Show.’ These kinds of gems don’t come along very often.”