The Luminous Kelli O'Hara

voiced and infinitely bankable Broadway stars of her generation. I'm as corney as Kansas and high as a flag on the fourth of July. If you'll excuse an expression, irons, I'm in lull, I'm in love, I'm in law. She worked hard to get there. O'Hara grew up in rural Oklahoma. At eighteen, she convinced legendary voice teacher Florence Birdwell to take her on as a protegee, as Kristin Chenowith did before her. After graduation, she toiled in the trenches in

Wichita and in New York as an understudy. She exudes gratitude for how far She's come. The thing is, though, despite the Tony, despite selling out Broadway and the West End in South Pacific, the King and I Kiss Me Kate and more, Kelly O'Hara gets tired of being luminous. I made choices to make a living. A commercial musical on Broadway is a financial living. That is um. There was more than I expected growing up on a farm

in western Oklahoma. I didn't take the when I did the public it was a financial It was de financially difficult, okay, um. And so to go do the little not that I've been asked or even called in for an audition, but to do those little things or wait for the you know, the TV job, or do one day of a guest artist for nothing on a TV show, I've never been able to afford to do that. So I keep saying

yes to the commercial Broadway musical. And the thing is is, um, if I have to make those choices, they have to be really really great for me. Believe me, if anyone had believed in me that I could play something that was a little bit more gritty than I'm in Love with a wonderful guy, I would have jumped at it any time in my past. I will never stop wanting to do a play or a theater theater. I should just say theater. I've always wanted to do a play. I've only been asked to do a play like once.

You know, people say, why don't you want to, you know, do more things. I'm not a star. I'm not you know, maybe in musical theater whatever. You say that in a certain bubble, but not even outside of this range. Did you study acting as well? Was acting a big did you? It was musical theater you study? No? I got an opera degree because that's what my teacher went. Yes, Yes, with Florence Birdwell, the premier voice teacher there, and um, I wanted my whole life to study with her, So

that's what I did. Did you break Florence Birdwell's heart when you moved from voice to the theater? You know, I was on a track to do opera, and I've since done some opera and just found very lovely people. But in that moment, in my senior of college, doing the met audition circuit, I met ugly people. It was

not for me. If I'm going to make art or if I'm going to make art, whatever that is if I'm going to do something that is expressive and communicative with my voice, I love to do it with people and feel things. And I just literally I remember saying, I want to be an actor. I don't want any part of that solo ego thing. That's not who I am. I want to go inside things and live in them. Pass the ball and if it gets passed back to me, I'm going to be paying attention and I'm gonna catch it,

but I'm gonna pass it back off quickly. That is exciting to me. And I walked into her room one day and I said, I told her. I had told her I'm not going to go to grad school. I'm not going to go to grad school. We had filled out all the applications for American Volcal Academy and everything, and I said, I'm gonna move to New York. I'm gonna go to acting school and I'm gonna be a

real actor. And I remember I walked in one day and she held up the application to a v A and she looked me in the eye and she ripped it into and she said, go live, Go do what you're gonna do. And honestly, she's more of that person too, So I didn't break her heart. I think I just surprised her um and she has supported me ever since. But I I went to Strasbourg for acting here in the city right when I moved, literally that fall, because I felt that insecurity, the idea that when you're an

opera singer there is no acting ability in there. I wanted so badly to be an actor, and I still so badly want to be a better actor. But I went to Strasbourg because I needed to have that um for myself, you know what I mean. Even if I thought, oh I can get into musicals, maybe an act okay, I needed it. I needed that label. Honestly, what's the one you did with? There was some real acting you had to do in that piece. Um. You know. I must I must have thought everything was like a major

acting I'll tell you what. I that the show that I didn't I feel like I knew what I was doing, or that I didn't speak up as an actor, which was sweet smell of success, which was my first big role with Let's Go and Brandosha James and stuff. And I look back at that as the time when I said either ship or get off the pot, like do it, speak out for yourself or stop this business. I was trying to lean on my singing and kind of felt like I was in a straight jacket and didn't make

any choices. It wasn't until things like you know, the Bridges of Madison County might have asked for me to be the most unlike myself. That was way late in the game. I had already done South Pacific and other things, but um, that was the one where I felt like, I've been here for a while, I've learned a few things. I'm gonna trust myself. It's interesting how for myself included when I got into the business and nowhere was this more uh laid there than when I would do plays.

Was how much I wanted to please people, and there if I didn't want to impose my ideas and say, well I want to do this, I want to do this. I walked in there going what do you want me to do? And I wanted everybody to direct me, and I was I was afraid. And then when I got into the world, even in small roles, supporting roles in films with legendary directors like Mike Nichols, you realize that on this mount Olympus. It was the opposite. They were looking at you like, well, what do you got? What

do you want to do? That's why you're here. I hired you because of your instincts, and do you find there was a bit of that of view that one point does Kelly O would turn around and I got this, I know what I want to do, absolutely show. I really think that It was the Bridges Masson County where

I said, I'm going to speak up for myself. I'm going to try to find my way in, and any smart director, anyone who's confident enough in their abilities, will say, yes, it's going to be only better if if it's more natural from you, if it's coming from you, use your voice. You know, I'm going to listen. As opposed to being threatened by that um that first job that I mentioned sweet film success, the girl before me had been fired

in the workshops. So I walked in so fearful it was my first role on Broadway that I would be fired, and I also felt like I would be people have already got it wrong once, you know. And I was walking in and it was that atmosphere too. It felt very much like nobody quite had control and Um, I learned Nick Kitner, and it was a bad time. It was after night, right after anyway, UM, I promised myself

I would never do that again. I remember actually having a conversation in a rehearsal where I was starting to feel that where there was a sexual scene between the my leading man and we were doing something and I've really never told the story. Uh, and we're just going to start with it. And Nick said, you know, stop, stop, you look like you're mothering him. And I knew that wasn't me. And I said, I know how to touch

a man. I know what I'm doing. And I stood up for myself for the first, like literally the first time, and it had to do with just being a human being a woman and I and I felt that in my core. I felt like, no, I there is something I can bring here. I might not be what you want or what other people expect or envision, but if you if you have any sense of your own humanity or self, that's what you bring, you know, if you

can access it. I literally have to take most of my questions down and throw them in the garbage because I was expecting a kind of Julie Andrews and you sent ship and going off the pod you said, I know how to touch a man. My interview with Kelly O. Harris going we're we're very often and we're off roading here completely. We're going up into territory. I was unprepared

to go for it. So I'm ready though, I'm ready. Um, But here's what's interesting to me is that we'll just get this out of the way, which is in the world that you typically inhabit. You're out there and it's a fantasy and they want it to be beautiful and they want to be And then then now you come this famous award winning singer in the theater and when you come out there, do you feel like that's the obligation? Is like you're hosting an event and you've got to

give these people this magical evening. I know what you're talking about. There is an obligation. This is what we do, and you do in order to just you know, get up and do it every night for hows a week for twenty years. You have to tell yourself. I heard once someone say it's either someone's first time seeing this theater at all, or it's someone's last time, and so it gives you this kind of reason to be, I guess,

because otherwise you're literally thinking of the grocery list. Sometimes when you've sung a song a hundred and seventy five times, you know, and you have to kind of find a way to connect. I think that I do this for very personal reasons. I don't know why it bit me a long time ago, because I wasn't raised around any

of it. Um So sometimes I think about that obligation, and sometimes I I lose myself in it in a weird way, like I've actually tried to have, you know, I try to dig deep and say, what does this do to you? That's different, I think sometimes in what other it does to other people. I guess I learned from it. I kind of fall into it. Even even after eight shows a week, I find myself kind of dealing with all of this, all of my innards out there.

And I think maybe it's because overwhelmed when singing a song, you almost broke down crying. That's I do. I do all the time, and it's so and it can be a song of song thousand times and something will just a It's how I filter, it's how I process, I think, and it's why I'm not quite tired of it. It's why I'm not quite jaded by it. Sometimes I am, but for the most part I find that I go inside it, maybe as opposed to just dealing with it all out here. You said that you didn't grow up

around this. What did your dad do? It's a farmer? Literally? Did you just laugh just that you are this queen of Broadway? And I found was a farmer. What did he farm? We farmed wheat, cattle, and cotton. It was in western Oklahoma, very small town that he grew up and my mother they met in the eighth grade. My dad went back to school when he was forty. He went to law school. It was his dream and he

changed our lives. I was sixteen when he graduated law school, and so my last two years of high school we had moved to the big city of Oklahoma City, and then I was off to college. His mother continues to be there. He's my dad's still kept. Yes, and my dad and my brothers still run cattle and they're still practice what kind of law they He and my brother practiced together. They practice a state tax, oil and gas law. Because he was a farmer. My dad's first big case

was fighting like Phillips. Their land had been kind of ruined by the oil drilling and stuff. And my dad represented he is a dooder and your mom school teacher what subject, uh, social studies? It was my dad, my dad to social studies. A dear friend of mine, Jeff Ambrassini, who I went to high school when I grew up with him. He and his wife were in the world you're in, you know, striving and then uh he was.

She was from Norman and they upped and left and moved to Oklahoma, and not only for her to be near her mother, but they got more work in that area than they did in New York. Um. I have a really good friend that's back there teaching voice and she does cabaret. She performed in the shows when they're there, And Um, New York was like air for me, Like

the first time I breathed. I remember running down I was twenty one, and I remember running down Fifth Avenue, darting in between people with my backpack on like I was in a car, like I was in rush hour. I was alive. I was alive for the first time, and I don't really believe that I knew it. What was it? About you that felt that way, this is the mountain you wanted to climb. Yes, And because I loved the vast number of people, different types of people,

I somehow didn't even matter. Who cares what I did. When you grew up in a small town, I was, you know, riddled by um. I had really good upbringing. I mean I did it was a safe but I was kind of riddled by the feeling of being different

a little bit. It was a chubby kid or whatever, and and there was really I was I was a chubby kid, and there was this kind of feeling of but I still did gymnastics, and I still did flips, and I still sang, and there was this feeling of you can't do that, you know, or I just felt like there was this kind of cap you know, of don't try to do anything special or and I it wasn't so much like I'll show you. It's more just like I need I need the quiet. I need that

all that to be quiet. And you just come up here and whether you make it or not, no one's really on your back about it. You're just doing it, you know. I've always loved the acceptance, you know, like whatever you're into people like, wow, you know whatever your thing is now, Scott ellis so I family with I went to go visit me to rehearsal, and I was, I don't want to say appalled, but I was mildly shocked by the mechanics of the rehearsal of the Broadway music.

I couldn't believe. It was like I was at Boeing and they were putting a jet plane together, how technical it was, and people were they were like okay again and they're like bot of the botto the pop pop up stop, and it was start start. I mean I got a headache watching this and how hard they were and how precise they were, and how they made them do it again and again. I mean I thought they were all getting paid just for the insanity inducing repetition

of it. Well you know what you're when you describe the musical theater rehearsal, My my heart kind of pounds with that. Yes, you know, you say it's like nauseating, but that data data stop. But that's not really me. I'm not a dancer. I'm not a timed performer. Um, which I love. I love that because I'm better at They do all do that until you come out and

then it's a play. Um, when you're rehearsing a musical, a big musical, the kind you would do, what does a director offer you at this point in your career. Any good director is never going to tell you where to go, how to stand, where to move. What do they tell you? Go, Let's go, let's read the scene, Let's see what happens, and then so you get it, you get something going on with with the person you're

working with. Whatever the scene is just like a play, and then they might have some suggestions about if you entered here, you know, because we've got exiting here. I think in a way, musical theater can be more cinematic because it's transitions. It's like what comes in between each scene. So we need this kind of thing filtering on while you're filtering off. So then you have these suggestions of how we're going to stage this as far as transitions,

but within the moment. I think, especially with Bart Sheer, who I've done a lot of shows with, we spend a lot of time at the table before, you know, or in school studying World War two or clown classes or whatever it is, that then we're going to put into it and then we only spend a few a couple of days just moseying around, you know, trying to

make a scene, and that that's it, that's set. And then once we start previewing or whatever, then he might say this, this and this, And then once in a while, when you're talking about kind of real, you know, the acting part of it, again comes to your room and says, you know, let's talk about if this is a deeper moment, you know, how do you feel about this or and

then we can get deeper. And but there's a lot of allowance if it's a good director, if they can trust you and you can trust them and believe me, there are times when I said, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here? You know, can you talk to me? But I mean, I think that you are ready to ask those questions and admit those things when you have the director who let you try first, and then if you need something you ask does the director

is embedded in his role? Is the vocal direction or is there somebody separate who handles you when you're singing? Oh yeah, I mean Bart bart Sheer wouldn't know what to say about. There's the musical director. Ted Spurling and Paul, Jim and Janni one of the greatest, and what I love about him again is just his absolute confidence in everyone else's ability. He doesn't control, he doesn't obsess. He just he sits there and moves his hand like an

inch high and inch low and just controls it. There's a lot of time where you're at a piano with someone like Jim and and they're talking about how you're gonna play the song. Yeah, you're to do it, and then we're gonna talk to Yeah, we're gonna I'm gonna bring my way, and then listen. We're gonna all listen to each other and kind of figure it out. We're gonna talk about Tempe and whatever. Um. But yeah, the music director in a musical is right up there with

the director and the choreographer or the stager. You kind of have a three part team where you have to all of those things have to fall in place. Tempo, how you transition from scene to scene, which is the director's choice, has to also be supported by musical interludes that time just right. So it's a it's a big team. It's not just doesn't sit still, it continually moves Broadway star Kelly O'Hara. Another great Broadway leading lady is Patti Lapone.

Her breakthrough role was as Eva Perone in A Vida, but on opening night in New York, she didn't know how legendary her performance would become. I threw up in the sink before I sank. Don't cry from Argentina. I got extremely bad notices opening in l A and extremely bad this is opening in San Francisco. There was an article coming out in Susie Nicko Parker's column the next day that I was going to be fired and that actor's Equity was waiting to clear Elaine Page to take

my place. I'm dealing with all of this press of me being fired and me not being able to sing the part, and still going on from my throwing the s and al came to me and said, we're going to laugh about this in twenty years, Patty. The rest of my interview with Patty Lapone is in our archives at Here's the Thing Dot Org. Kelly O'Hara returns after the break. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Kelly O'Hara has been at the top

of the Broadway game for almost twenty years. Some things have stayed the same, while others are unrecognizable. Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest ones isn't even a stage thing. I remember I was doing South Pacific, I got pregnant with my first child. I left to have him, and I came back to do my next Broadway show.

I remember that I'm having a meeting and rehearsal about social media, about filming, what you could and couldn't film, what you couldn't couldn't post, and literally the show before that show the idea of having anyone come inside your rehearsal room and sharing it with anybody but your team, your family. I I thought they were joking, Like I literally thought I was being you know, maybe candid camera or being punked. I was kind of horrified. Now I

can be old fashioned. I'm made fun of by all my friends because I I still kind of live in that place of how dare you, how dare you share this problem with the world so that they can be a part of our that because what we bring to me, well, that's is that what we're leaning on or were we

going to lean on? This craft? So that I had to really get used to, because then everyone started filming all of the rehear souls and they said, oh, this is only to teach the choreography or whatever b s. You know, that's going to be somewhere, and then there's going to be the commentary, and then then that's going to affect decisions. Why don't we trust ourselves? You know? So I actually had to get used to that part of theater. When you do these shows, do you have

a casting approval? Sometimes? I mean, you know, maybe we're gonna make you do it with somebody you don't want to do it with. No, not anymore. And I mean all the way back to light in the Piazz, I sat in on the auditions for Fabrizio, the guy I played I loved and um which is always great opposite Matthew Morrison. It's always great to kind of feel, but

you never see. The thing is that you might shoot yourself in the foot because you might think that you want to work with somebody and you might be pleasant you don't think you don't and then really be pleasantly surprised by have someone. How someone works is or comes off is very different how they normally are. Sometimes Um, I've been pretty lucky. Almost everyone across the board has been pretty great to work with for the most part, you know, and sometimes I got a choice and sometimes

I didn't. I found that Pacino had the great line. I interviewed Pacino a million years ago from my college favor that I listen to your podcast that's very funny, and Paccino said to me that he didn't get involved in the cast. He kept his focus on himself, into his own thing and let everything take care of itself. Do you sit there and go it doesn't matter who

the guy is. Now, that's you know, it might not matter so much in film, although you really need to make something with somebody, but there's you're you're you know, you're getting a close up, you're getting different angles. I think in theater there's an element of actually kind of being a little bit as opposed to start and stop catching some sort of specific thing. In theater, you're kind

of having two hours of maybe being together. And if there was someone I just really I didn't like or didn't manage that to the extent that there were people who you love them less than other people you worked with that when you did that, it's just something where you just have to find a way to just get

through it. Yeah, but I'm terrible at that. I'm so emotional about it that I would just maybe not to their I mean I would just come in my dressing room and just scream and throw things into a pillow. When you let me borrow your dressing I can see there were a lot of dents in the wall and a lot of holes in the wall. Though this woman is really she's wild, She's a she's a fire cat. Listen. I mean, when you have to pretend like you love somebody, it's and they're playing, you know, and this is this

wasn't kiss Me Kate? Which is that dressing room? But when they're you know, you're doing a musical comedy or a musical theater piece and someone wants to think they're doing Macbeth or you know, they're they're Willie Lohman or something, and you're like, come on, you know, we all take this very seriously and we're doing our best, but come on, get over it. You know that that pisces me off. Who's the guy you did kiss Me Kate? With? Chase?

We just had I never had to throw things about well, all the holes in the wall were about something else. The the I loved him. I loved him. He glowed with a warm, warm and a masculinity and I'm like, he had it all. Like a lot of guys want to do the masculinity thing and they lose the glow, you know what I mean. And then those guys who come on and they just have they have it all.

He was fantas, don't cut this out. I want him to hear this, and I'm gonna tell him to listen, because I mean, I think he kind of got us, you know, a bad rap for somehow he didn't quite get acknowledged. And I and I I just I just thought he really was such a sweetheart. Whoa is it? This guy's great? Um, what's the last straight play you did? Uh? King Lear? And you did that? I'm looking at you. I mean, I just love this. This is why we're

so glad you're here. I'm looking at you. When I think you I'm willing to watch that man right out of my hair. Then I go, what do you do after that? King Lear? That's exactly what I did. Um. I desperately wanted to do something. Besides, I was going to wash that man right out of my hair. I mean, listen exactly what you assume. Uh. And I think that's why Julie Andrews. You said Julie Andrews, Well, Julie Andrews just throws f bombs and cut curses all the time.

She's that's she's I think she must have done that, not only her upbringing. But you get so sick and tired of what you feel is an assumption about yourself, even if it's true, even if there's a little bit of that. And I want to apologize for being, you know, so god damn happy to be in love and my shows are so genuinely sincere. I want to apologize for that because it's what I love to do. I love to go inside something and really try to make it. When I first met you, I was surprised you remind

me more of like Bob Hoskins than Julie Andrews. I'm like, Wow, this chick is tough. Well, I don't know if I well, whatever it is, I thought you were. Thank you. I'll take that, But I just I think that you I wanted to act, I wanted to do Shakespeare did it where I did its public Sam Waterson was earlier. It was not a well received production. There were lots of things about it, and when you're doing it, what was it like for you? I mean, I think that it

was very strangely imagined. It when you're sitting in notes sessions and there's no conversation coming back from the director Um who has never done a Shakespeare play, but also just um. When you make the choice to just be silent and never say anything because maybe you don't know what to say, your actors start to get a little uncomfortable and get wind of Maybe it's not so much just silence and and listening, it's more it's well and

we had great people in the cast. It's where I met my great friend Arian Moyad, who I can continue I've continued to work with and me too. So I think that it was a great experience, but it was not well received. And Sam, who was so wonderful and we all know his Shakespeare ability, he choked on an apple the night before our first preview for third even

minutes it went down his whimpipe. The next night he had no voice, like zero voice, and so we had to cancel and we but the next night it was so raw and broken and then we had to do the show eight shows a week, every night. He never regained his voice. He never So it was when Bill Irwin played the full which was all really fun. You know, we had these great right, great top people, and um, it just it wasn't It just didn't come together. I mean you know at the time we were hoping it would,

but you done shake. I mean I was the person with like raising my like, asking questions, listening to every single thing, walking in the door with no and this is how I handle myself, with no pretense, no assumptions that I'm going to be great. It's all about I just wanted to hear, I want to learn, I wanted to listen. Um. I did the same thing with the opera. It's like, I just want to do these things. If I fall in my face, I guess at this point I fall on my face, But I just I cannot

be doing one thing with all the assumptions. With the moment you shout there and go I want to do more of this, Yeah, something definitely, And I've just what's the part you want to do? Now? What's a piece of you? I'm sure there are several, but what's an example of when you're dying to do well, I mean rosalind or you know, I think there have been a

couple of even Shakespeare, oh chab Yeah. Sure. You know what I really I really would love to do is I would love to venture into these kind of great American not Who's afraid of Princition in your Wolf, but these these living room American stories or something more contemporary Augustociage County, you know, these families sitting here. I have so many ideas for you, well, do something with me,

so many ideas. Do you find that because you have this very well established and very successful queer that you just weren't interested in chasing movie roles and TV roles? I got this, I mean yeah, I think also I had such I had big dreams, in my opinion, but growing up, you didn't. I didn't know about all of this. I didn't know. And I loved musicals the most because I was watching movie musicals, not live ones even. But I wasn't thinking Hollywood. I wasn't thinking that kind of thing.

It's I moved here, I started to do it, and I guess I probably felt so like I'm doing this. I got this is what I always wanted and so there was this weird part of me that put a cap on well, you know, that would be selfish to want more UM. But then of course you realize it's all part of it. It's all part of what you want to do. And and I started auditioning little bits, but I would be doing eight shows a week, the

shows at night, going in for two seconds. And it really at that point in my career twenties, early thirties, it really kind of I would walk in and it was just about what I looked like. I could feel it, I could see the other women in the room, and it started to put a dark thing inside me because I'm blonde. It was I was going in for those things. Are you piste off about the career you could have

had if you weren't a leading lady? I mean, listen, yeah, I'm grateful would have had a career if I didn't different well, a different um. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, let me just let me say this. I did start working. I did get at kind of a big TV show. I didn't get to take it. This was a really pivotal point in my life. I was doing a Broadway show, The Nice Work If you can get it, and the l A studio agreed to shoot me Mondays and Tuesdays. They were going to work around

my schedule. Just the third lead ran five years big success. I had some producers playing god and just said I can't do it. We're going to sue you, we won't let you do it. And I am stubborn, and I mean it was. It was conversation over and my way of dealing with it as opposed to, well, then f you, I'm gonna, you know, leave all you guys and go take this was It's not meant to be. I'm never gonna audition for television again. This is where I belong. I'm supposed to do musicals. It's all I can do.

It's the only thing I'm you know, able to do. And I did an audition for like four years after that, and and it it's in here. Were you miserably the entire time? They know? Okay, so no, that was actually a really fun time. But I was miserable in my little stomach at the people who had made decisions for me like that that I couldn't get out of. And if it had been one show before with different producers who get it that this is a career, and that

you give a little to get a little. I would have anyway, So I don't find regrets on that because I have to get over that resentment, I guess. And then I start doing little things here and there. And I meet Arian Moya and he writes a web series, and I do the kind of work I want because it's small, it's no money. He teaches me about lenses, he teaches me about close ups, he teaches me about the things I never would have known, and I would

have gone and done television without any knowledge. Gets me an Emmy nomination, and then I start getting things a little by little. After that they're not that thing, and maybe it will lean into something else. But I will always be the person who thinks, maybe I'm done with all this, Maybe I'm just going to live in Connecticut and raise my kids. What's it like for you as a mom and every night you're out there, Yeah, how did you manage that? I've only managed, but I don't.

It's not easy and it's no success. And the kids coming into the city dinner with you when we when we were in the city, they came between shows every time. Of course, I'm you know, nursing, doing everything you have to during the show. Uh four years ago, So you left the city not that long ago. Yeah. Um so when the baby, when the kids were babies, we were here. I couldn't have done it otherwise because they had we had I had to feed them, you know all that stuff.

Um it's getting harder as they get older, because they notice more. They want more from me, They need more for me, and I want to give it to them. So I ten and six, I didn't do a show after the King and I until until last year. I did a very short run of Kiss Me Kate. And that short run was really tough. It was really tough. Off I'm gone. They come home from school, there's a little bit of time, and then I have to get in so I can be here early, do my yoga,

do my quiet, do do everything that I do. Um So that that was difficult, But I these are times when they come and they go shooting a television show. I'm flying to San Francisco. I'm gone for days at a time. I'm missing birthdays. That's worse. The thing about a Broadway show, the only you know, the thing I can say about it that's doable is that it's consistent, so I know they know what time Mom's leaving. I wake up with them every morning. You know, that's when

people say, how are you doing it well? The alternate is sometimes much harder. If you're lucky, you're admitted midnight midnight, and that's and then waking up for the bus because I got to see them at six thirty, and then I would go back to sleeve kind of waste your day or whatever until they get home off the bus. But you just do it, and I it doesn't sound too glamorous, but you do it because I want to

try to do it for them. And you protect your voice during the day when you're seeing on stage now as much as I can. What's called a famous Broadway singer who shall remain nameless, and her assistant said to me, don't call it before twelve. She takes no phone CaAl, she doesn't talk before noon. I don't have an assistant who speaks for me, first of all. Secondly, uh, I will speak to you and then I'll rest later. Um, I protect my voice. If I had laryngitis, would protect

my voice. But I'm not going to be dramatic about what I do. I'm either going to live in it and enjoy it and have control over my own life, or I won't do it. Kelly O'Hara, not justin Anginue. If the lightmotif of our conversation was O'Hara's drive to get serious, dramatic roles to shake her image, the story has a hopeful coda. This new project I'm working on, I can't talk about it. I'll mention it to you and you'll understand. It's the closest thing I've felt to

letting this part of me out. It's an acting role, a serious acting role. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to. Here's the thing, o