The Titaníque Team Has A Few Ideas For Broadway’s Next Great Musicals

It’s the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, and Titanique co-stars and co-creators Marla Mindelle and Constantine Rousouli are winding down a nonstop, whirlwind week of press appearances and parties for out-of-town Tony voters. Broadway’s six-day workweek can be a punishing grind for any star — even more so in late May if one is nominated for multiple Tony Awards. Luckily, the pair have mastered the art of barreling through it all.

“We’re napping every five minutes,” says Rousouli, 38. “I’m like, ‘Bye. I’m taking a nap.’”

“That’s the only way to get through,” adds Mindelle. “You actually have to put yourself in a coffin for 45 minutes.”

Titaníque — a high-energy parody of the James Cameron classic Titanic told through the eyes of Céline Dion — has been a long time in the making, having premiered off-Broadway where it enjoyed a nearly 10-year run. Mindelle and Rousouli met on the dinner-theater scene in L.A., where Rousouli pitched the idea one night after a couple of martinis. Now, the show, in which Mindelle plays Dion and Rousouli portrays Jack Dawson, has been nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and a Best Actress nod for Mindelle.

“There was a period of time where Connie always had hope in his heart that it would go to Broadway, but I kind of gave up the Broadway dream,” says Mindelle, 41. “It just feels that much sweeter now that we’re here and there are so many people that haven’t seen it.”

But the pair — who cowrote the show with Tye Blue, the show’s director — still had enough gas in the tank to take up Bustle on a brainstorm: Which other iconic turn-of-the-millennium movies deserve their own ridiculous musical? If you see any of these on a Broadway stage in the next few years, you read it here first.

The first movie that came to mind for me was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. How would you do it? There’s so much material to mine.

Constantine Rousouli: That movie is so iconic and very much up our alley. I feel like we would’ve probably done that at Rockwell Table & Stage 10 years ago, where we came up with the idea of Titaníque. It was this immersive dinner theater in L.A. It would definitely be bubblegum pop — very ’90s or early 2000s pop. It’ll be Britney and Christina.

Marla Mindelle: Very much that. When we were working at Rockwell, we would pair songs to the time period or something — like with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, there are subtle themes of female empowerment. So you could have “Miss Independent” by Kelly Clarkson.

CR: 1,000%.

MM: And then you would have, I don’t know, a classic musical theater girlie like Taylor Louderman starring in it. Or Laura Bell Bundy. There would just be fierce dance breaks galore.

CR: Laura Bell would be incredible.

MM: And you would have some just straight theater heartthrob, like Derek Klena. Or honestly, Christian Borle. We just literally lift everyone from Legally Blonde.

CR: It really should be a musical. It’s such a great rom-com. And if a rom-com’s done well, especially if you really up the script and put more jokes in it, it’s made for musical numbers.

MM: I really like the idea of Twister. One of the things that we’ve been doing recently is imagining what has not been turned into a musical. And so we just turned Jurassic Park into a musical onstage, which was so fun. And basically Jeff Goldblum was like, “I think the dinosaurs are gay,” and a gay dinosaur comes out — and it’s Frankie Grande in a harness.

Love it.

MM: And we’re like, “Here’s an Anusaurus rex.” And so the next one that I wanted to do is Twister, but kind of do it along that line where it could be a tornado … or it could just be a gay man who’s wreaking havoc. So it could be Frankie Grande as a tornado causing emotional chaos everywhere he goes.

CR: In a small town.

MM: In a small town, but it’s just a tornado. We love to personify some natural disasters. We’ve personified the iceberg. It would be really funny to personify the tornado as well and make just a gay tornado, ribbon dancing. Frankie would love that.

CR: Don’t give Frankie anything, because he will take it and run.

MM: He’ll also take his shirt off. Any excuse for him to take his shirt off.

I was talking about this interview with a co-worker who said, “I want to see Twister because of the wind effects.” And I was like, “This is Broadway. That can be very expensive.”

MM: We would get leaf blowers.

CR: There’s a video of me in the pandemic when we were promoting Titaníque — or at least trying to make up commercials to keep the fan base alive — and I made TikToks with Marla at my mother’s house in the dead of winter with a leaf blower. I put it outside in freezing snow weather in Jersey in my niece’s little Barbie car with a leaf blower blowing the sh*t out of her hair. That’s what it would be. It would be like a Beyoncé fan onstage.

Like when you do a photo shoot and they have the fans going, so your hair is all billowy.

MM: We would just have people follow me around. Instead of the Sunset Boulevard crew following around Nicole Scherzinger with a camera.

Speaking of pop divas, there are some great J. Lo options for musicals.

CR: Maid in Manhattan for me is still one of the greatest rom-coms out there. I think it was the best she’s ever been in a movie, aside from Selena. Sorry, hot take.

MM: I think it should be her entire discography — only her songs. It should just be her musical, her songs, from the good to the bad to the ugly. Let’s throw in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Let’s throw in This Is Me… Now. Let’s throw in “Jenny From the Block.”

CR: Everything. “Waiting for Tonight” — the club mix, because the club mix with the lasers was my favorite thing I’ve ever seen in my time. It would be all of her discography set to Maid in Manhattan.

MM: And honestly, I think we could get her to star in it too. Jennifer Lopez’s Broadway debut is in a musical movie about her with her iconic discography? I’m sorry, that would sell out.

We need to make this happen, guys.

CR: Let me call her.

MM: Produced by Ben Affleck. She puts her own money into it too. Remember how she produced the documentary of This Is Me… Now? We’re just going to have her raise all the money for the musical as well. So it’s going to be self-produced. It’ll be her Hamilton.

CR: She would nail the show.

The other two we were batting around were You’ve Got Mail and Zoolander.

MM: OK, Zoolander I think needs to be all RuPaul “Supermodel (You Better Work)” — all fashion songs. It’s Devil Wears Prada-esque. Early ’90s fashion songs.

CR: You know what else would be amazing? Early Robyn.

MM: EDM pop music. The whole theater is a runway, literally crosswalks. And then who’s playing Zoolander? Actually, Connie, you’re playing Zoolander.

CR: It should be me. Sorry. I do it every time in a picture, so I might as well just do it onstage.

MM: You honestly do pose like Zoolander. We need to work on that.

CR: And You’ve Got Mail should be iconic Sara Bareilles.

MM: Oh, yeah, Sara Bareilles writes the score.

CR: A beautiful Sara Bareilles score, and it has a lot of heart. We definitely make it funny, but it would definitely be our first earnest musical.

MM: I don’t know if we know how to make anything earnest. I’m imagining the entire theater covered in a giant Windows 98 or AOL.com backdrop. And then it’s one of those things during intermission, you just keep getting “You’ve got mail.” Something really f*cking annoying during intermission.

CR: Do you remember when AOL had celebrities do the voice? I had Whoopi Goldberg. She was like, “Baby, you’ve got mail.”

MM: It would be a big intermission gimmick kind of thing. I think you could write somewhere what your very first screen name was, and then they would blast that intermission with a picture of your face.

CR: Love that idea. Marla, what was your screen name?

MM: Mine was awful. Mine sounded like I was a gay man into golden showers. It was goldensuns@aol.com. I thought that was the coolest name. What was yours, Connie? Yours was something bad.

CR: Mine was pretty rich. Mine was Conair, as in the hairdryer, but that was taken. So I had to go C-O-N H-E-I-R, as in heir to the throne.

MM: Ew.

CR: Shut up. It was f*cking genius.

MM: We would just be blasting old screen names and pictures from that time period.

CR: That would be kind of fun.

With AI and everything that’s happening now, it’d be nice to be nostalgic for those late ’90s, early aughts.

CR: Us millennials.

It’s crazy. I feel like the elder statesman in a room now. I’m like, “I’m an old millennial.”

MM: Oh, same.

CR: It’s wild. These young kids have no idea.