Jessie Mueller

“Some of the best actors think they're terrible; that's what keeps you connected to a vulnerability that makes it possible for people to empathize with you.”

“'If I Loved You.' All the way. Totally intimidated by it. From the outside, it has this aura of being one of the greatest musical theater scenes ever written.”

“'White Christmas' is one of my favorite movies, so I've always just had a love for that kind of golden era musical.”

“My first professional gig was 'Once Upon a Mattress' at the Drury Lane Oakbrook... I was in the ensemble. I was one of the ladies in waiting, and I covered Winnifred.”

“Oftentimes, I feel like the clock is on, and there's money at stake, and you gotta get up there and dance for grandma, and it better be great, and you better get it right.”

“There's not millions of dollars riding behind something - so I think a lot of people took chances on me and cast me in roles in Chicago that I never would have gotten cast in possibly if I had come to New York right away. I got to be the not-your-typical-choice for a role.”

“I really feel strongly that we don't need to dumb things down for children.”

“If I've gotten to a point where people want to see something because I'm in it, I'm grateful and humbled. But having an awareness of that doesn't help me do what I need to do, I think.”

“I always loved playing the sidekick, and that's what I expected - I didn't think I was pretty enough or diva enough to play the lead.”

“Directors didn't know what to do with me in college. I didn't really sound like a belter. I didn't look like a soprano. But in New York, I was in the right place at the right time, where my unusualness fit the bill.”

“My dad listened to a lot of James Taylor when I was growing up. We had a couple of his cassettes in the car, and we'd go on a lot of long family car trips. It was either strange musicals or James Taylor - or Whitney Houston. It was quite the combination there.”

“'What's the Use' is normally done with all the women onstage with Julie. Sometimes it's staged as a 'lay at my feet, dear children, and let me tell you the ways of life.' We felt like that wasn't really what was going on.”

“Those moments onstage when you realize what you and your compatriots are doing matters - someone in that room needs to hear that story, someone needs to escape or heal or learn or breathe, and remember, we're all in this together.”

“I think the job of art and drama is to hold a mirror up to those things and say, 'What do you think about it?'”

“I'm a sucker for a good country song.”

“I loved being in Cambridge. I think about it often. It was this great little capsule of time to me.”

“I went to Syracuse University.”

“I didn't really start performing until high school. My whole family is actually in the business, and started in the business in Chicago, so I was going to shows when I was a teeny-tiny kid, but I didn't really start performing until high school.”

“My reason for leaving 'Beautiful', because I had such an amazing time on that show, was by the time I left, I had been doing the show for almost two years. I was a little burnt out.”

“I'm glad to say I'm experiencing more of a conversation in my artistic workforce world than I ever have before. But it's a job, as an artist, to reflect the world we live in; that's our job.”