Sara Chase Lives For Broadway’s Golden Age

Watching Schmigadoon! on Broadway feels like time-traveling back to the Golden Age of live theater, and that’s by design: The comedy, like its Apple TV predecessor of the same name, deliberately draws inspiration from the 1940s and 1950s. It also happens to be a period that the show’s star, Sara Chase, is particularly fond of.

“I have such respect for that era,” she says. “[Our] musical numbers could exist alongside what already exists. I think that’s the key to their success. There’s so much craft to it.”

The cast and creative team even spent a day at the Library of Congress when they were in Washington, D.C., for Schmigadoon!’s out-of-town premiere, where they viewed lyricists’ handwritten notes of the songs to which they pay homage in the show. “I immediately cried seeing ‘Do Re Mi’ in Oscar Hammerstein’s writing, in pencil,” she adds. “I was a blubbering little mess.”

Schmigadoon! is set in a magical town where every day is a musical in the spirit of a bygone time. Alongside Alex Brightman, Chase plays Melissa, one half of a modern-day couple going through a rocky phase. They accidentally wander in and discover they can only escape if they find true love — which may or may not be with each other. Chaos obviously ensues, with Chase’s character beating the drum for feminism in her dated surroundings.

Schmigadoon! blends two of Chase’s loves: musicals and comedy. Although she dreamed of appearing on Broadway since childhood, her early professional training was at the comedy institution Upright Citizens Brigade. Schmigadoon! offers her a chance to flex those muscles, like in a scene where her and Brightman’s characters trade insults they helped draft with the show’s writers.

Initially believing she was cast as “a placeholder for somebody fancier,” Chase, 42, is now enjoying the ride, and was recently nominated for Tony for Best Actress in a Musical.

“I think I would have been grateful for this moment and this experience anyway,” she says. But achieving this level of success at this point in her career puts it in even greater perspective. “I’m so grateful to get to do what I do and to have been given a mouthpiece to speak about it all.”

On her favorite backstage hang:

The wig room is the place to be. Ana Gasteyer, me, and Izzy [McCalla] just catch up and gossip. I didn’t realize how special having Ana there was going to be for me, because we both come from the comedy world but also do musical theater. Our Venn diagram of who we know, what we know, and our sense of humor overlaps.

They gave us an option to come to our room and put the wig on by ourselves. I was like, “No, I need these 15 minutes to check in with my ladies.”

On working with Alex Brightman:

I say to him all the time that I don’t even want to imagine this process without him. The entire thing is influenced by the fact that we’re not only old friends, but we see eye to eye on how we should lead the company. What we do is hard and it’s repetitive, so we make sure that there are no attitudes, everyone is positive, and people feel taken care of. And, onstage, we have this rapport where it feels so safe and natural that we can just play.

On her pre-show ritual:

I take a quiet moment by myself and thank whoever in the other realm allowed me to be there, whether that’s ancestors or Angela Lansbury. I just remind myself of all the people who came before me and how privileged I am to be a part of that history.

On her day-off hobbies:

I’m an amateur birder. I live near Central Park. I take aimless, long walks and try to catalog all the birds, flora, and fauna that I see. I’ve done the Wild Bird Fund walks sometimes. I feel like at this point I could lead them.

On her Olympic inspiration:

I have a pre-show playlist that ends in “MacArthur Park” because Alysa Liu’s final skate at the Olympics was so inspiring. I love her approach and I agree with it. When you perform, you should not be nervous, even though that happens. You should be filled with joy because presumably what you’re doing makes you and other people happy. And if you perform with joy then it’s infectious. That’s easier said than done. There’s a lot of anxiety and fear that comes with performing, but it should, most of the time, be full of joy.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.