Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Jessica Vosk.
Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dare to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacts these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman and honor the Tony Awards this year. I'm beyond excited to have on an icon in the Broadway world, Jessica Vosk. She's graced Broadway stages with performances as Alphaba and Wicked, Jenna,
and Waitress, and currently stars in Hell's Kitchen. Her quick wit and crystal voice captured the hearts of theater lovers. A sharp and witty woman who loves Broadway my kind of girl, so as you can imagine, we bonded instantly when we met. I remember thinking, how have we not
known each other forever? Jessica is truly one of those people who lights up every room she walks into, and maybe unexpected of artists, She's practical and logical to her core, so much so that she dropped her pursuit of musical theater in college and instead went into finance, fully believing she was closing the musical chapter of her life. She worked her way up on Wall Street, but something was always gnawing at her, an itch that just wouldn't go away.
In this episode, Jessica shares how she made the terrifying leap from a stable career in finance to chasing her dream on stage. But and this is the part we don't talk about enough, it didn't all click into place right away. Jessica didn't leave the finance job and land a Broadway roll the next week. In fact, there were years of struggle she had to build from the ground up. She babysat, did odd jobs, and went to every audition and networking opportunity she could. And it wasn't just the
career challenges. There were personal ones too. In fact, Jessica shared something she's never talked about publicly before, a low point that now, in hindsight, has allowed her to blossom into the person and to the career she has now. Jessica opened up about her experience dealing with alcohol and ultimately her decision to go to rehab. This conversation is real and raw, but also full of laughter, because that's who Jessica is. She's honest, she's brave, and she's wildly talented,
and I'm so lucky to call her a friend. Enjoy.
I'm Jessica Vosk and I am a Broadway performer. But I would also say that I'm kind of a jack tress of all trades. Which trades, oh gosh, business, marketing, singing, acting. If you want me to dance, I will, but you shouldn't pay me. Teaching just entrepreneurialism, I would say. But let's go back to a little jess Yeah, so, like, what did you think you were going to be when you grow up? Oh? Man, A lawyer? A lawyer. I was pretty heavy from grade school on into criminal justice.
Any class, any ap class that I could possibly take that had to do with debate, or again crime and justice where we got to visit prisons or have you know, very in depth conversations and debates about current trials happening at the time was my bread and butter.
Did you have a performer? You clearly have a performer gene, but liked were you one of those little kids who is like just looking to perform all the time? Yeah?
I was. I got bitten by the singing bug maybe at like three years old. My dad had a band when he was young, before he left that life and went into pharmaceuticals. He was a singer, had like a Crosby Stills, Nash Young kind of band, very harmonic, and so I used to sing with him in the living room when I was three, And so from that point on, I did as many community theater things as I could. I auditioned for all the school shows. I loved it all.
I would sit in my room for hours just singing along to the cassette tips of my favorite Broadway shows and my favorite singers. I mean it was I think I was trying and tell people I feel music so physically in my body that it's hard to explain.
If you had this performer bug in you and you were doing the community theaters and the shows, why didn't you think of that as your future as your career? You know what I At first?
I did. At first, I did after the lawyer thing. I mean, I remember my mom got a call from one of my grade school teachers and they were like, Jess is really phenomenal with law and considered really pushing her to do something like that. And then I got really into high school plays and musicals and choir and all that stuff, and I did think at that point, Okay, is this possible? Can I do this for a living? You know, Broadway is such a feels so very far off.
It feels i'd go see Broadway shows. I you know, was the kid that stayed at the stage door fingers crossed Kodak camera. Am I going to meet the Broadway stars? What is it like? Oh my god, wigs, makeup?
You know.
It seemed so otherworldly and not attainable. And yet by the time I became a senior in high school, I thought that I would eventually become a Broadway performer. And I did get into a school for musical theater, and so I did go for a semester to a musical theater program. But while I was there, I just was kind of disenchanted, I guess, and it wasn't for me. So I quickly was like, well, shit, if this isn't for me, then maybe am I not supposed to be
doing this thing? So then I pivoted and disenchanted by what. You know, it was one of the It was a private program, and I kind of had this mentality of why am I not just going in auditioning?
Right?
Now in New York for stuff. Not that I thought I was better than anybody else, That's not at all what I thought. But I also knew that it was a lot of money to go there, and you know, I also knew that not everybody in the program was going to make it, and I didn't know why the teachers were acting like everybody was going to just immediately get to Broadway once those four years were done. And then after those four years, if you don't get to Broadway,
you're saddled with what the tons of debt? And then what right you're in a program where you're singing, acting, and dancing all day long, But then what's the other You're not getting any other skill that is being presented in these programs. So I left, and you know, my parents said, Okay, well you aren't not going to school, so pick another school in state so it's nice and
financially sound, and I chowed a different major. And that was really that I didn't I kind of didn't look back as far as musical theater was concerned.
Jessica moved on and started a communications investor relations program. But the nail in the coffin was really when she auditioned for American Idol.
I decided, I believe you know I again, I have to think about it was early, very early on. I think it must have been really right after I left music theater school and I was in college, because I think about the boyfriend that I was with, So it was early on. Iimatt and I auditioned for America. I had very early on in the season and it was a held at Giant Stadium in New Jersey and thousands
of people showed up. It was like maybe two the season after Kelly Clarkson, or two seasons after Kelly Clarkson, so it's like the Jam and no social media, nothing like that, nothing, nothing existed. Yet you show up, you get a number the audition for the executive producers. I made it through. I have to go back into a holding room. I have to sign a stack of papers of course, giving your entire life away should you make it onto the show, but you don't care at the
time because it's American Idol. And I then made it through to the producers. After the producers, I made it through again to the judges. So now we're like the amount of time that passes in between these auditions is about a year. So they take a polaroid of view in the outfit that you're in on the first time for content annuity, to make sure that you have it for the judges because it looks like they're filming everything
at the same time. So then I showed up at Chelsea Pears, which is where the third and final audition was for Simon, Paula and Randy and Ryan Seacrest was there and you were allowed to bite your family. So my family drove all the way out from Pennsylvania. My boyfriend came and they all wait on one side of the room and you and everybody else, all the other contestants are on the other side of the room, and it was wild. The celebrity judges did not show up
for twelve hours. We were stuck in there for twelve hours. They did the thing where they came around and sort of interview you on camera. The producers come around and one producer who took a liking to me and said, you know, is there anything in your life like have you ever been a meth addict? Have you ever been homeless? Have you ever gotten pregnant? Do you have a kid somewhere? And I just I was pretty boring, and I went in. Finally the judge showed up. They asked all of us
to come back. Actually, they said, the judges are really tired. They just got here. They don't want to do this and be on camera, but we're leaving it up to you if you want to audition or not. And all of us were like, our families are here, we've been here for twelve hours, we're auditioning. Well, none of us made it through, and they were they were in shitty moods.
Let's not let's not lie. But I got in. I sank alone by heart, and Simon said I was desperate, and I was like, just don't do anything on camera because it's going to make it on TV if you do something crazy on camera. Don't do anything on camera. And Ryan Seacrest has an earpiece in and they all have earpieces, and so you leave the room and the camera follows you all the way out to the car, and I just was tunnel vision again, very eyes to
the floor, don't say anything. And I remember we got on the train, my boyfriend and I back to Montclair, New Jersey, where I was living at the time, because that's where I was going to college and I was a mess. I was so embarrassed. I ad a hamburger at the local pub and it was mostly just embarrassment and probably a little bit of anger, but that was a core memory. And yes, for me, it was like, Okay, I'm done. I am yeah, Nail and Coffin. I don't need to do this. I shouldn't be doing this. I
don't know why I thought I could do this. I'm done.
So is that what took you in that direction? Like, is that you know why finance? Why corporate America in the first place that you were like, this feels this feels secure, this feels safe, and that was what you were aiming for at that point, Yeah.
It was, it was it was how to Honestly, it was mostly me thinking about what would make my parents proud. I guess I was also really embarrassed that they had to be there for the American Idol thing. And you know, a career path. My parents did practical things. You know, my parents both have artistic qualities. My mom actually was
an artist, a graphic designer. She sketched and painted. But then when in real estate, my father had a fantastic band, he could sing, he went into pharmaceuticals, like it was the typical boomer trajectory. And so I think there was a part of me too that was like, I can't believe that I went through something like that in front of my parents, and I'm never going to I'm never going to allow them to see something like that again. And that's the first time I'm saying this out loud.
That's interesting, But it sounds like that was like what you saw, like you were following the path of what you saw, Like, yes, you can love art, but it's not what you do. What you do is practical, exactly.
And practical she was. She left any dreams of theater behind, putting one hundred percent into this new corporate path. Jessica finished early, graduated with honors, and found a job in finance.
I rose the ranks pretty fast at that job. So for me, I worked a lot with clean energy clients. So I had, you know, an area of clean energy, wind energy. I had an area of corporate real estate, and then I had a personal finance area. So I sort of like worked in these three areas with clients, and I would travel most of the day to day was like in the office. A lot of earnings calls, a lot of hopping on calls with executives talking about damage control, if something stock wise happened that we had
to talk to the press about. There was a lot of liaising between press and sea level suite, and then there was a ton of like three days of the week, I'd be in Texas doing something for this wind energy client, or I would have to fly out to San Francisco and do something for this personal finance company and be
with them. So it was a lot of back and forth and taught me a lot about if I'm going to a lunch, it's either going to be with a client, or it's going to be with one of the head requorters of the FT or the Wall Street Journal and sitting with them to place a story or to make sure a story doesn't get placed store to you know, it's that kind of again, jack of all trades, ability to be that chameleon within the job. So I rose
Arin's pretty fast at that job. It was it was the type of thing where we were working with enough sea level executives and doing enough pitches where it felt like I was the person to be in the room because I was really good at volleying and improving and kind of now I would call it auditioning or walking into a room or being you know that type of person where you can throw me anything and I'll be able to come back with something. So it was kind
of fun for me at the time. But nobody, nobody there knew that I could sing, or that I was a theater girly under wraps.
But really you were pulling from your theater background to be successful in investor relations and in business. Yes, yes, so I didn't know that, right, but I love that, Like already the seeds are planted. It's like a little foreshadowing. It totally was Oh I love that. Okay, So I think a lot about what success looks like at different points in our lives. What do you think success was for you at that point?
Money, health, insurance, the ability to say, like, I have a job that I'm locked into, I work with all of these great large companies that are you know, foreign companies going public on the US market. Look at all of my jargon. I'm very very smart. I think that was success to me at the time. It wasn't necessarily happiness.
So it was a really interesting thing because it became you know, how do I become the best at this at this but I also didn't love it, so at the time, I didn't realize that what I thought of as success was actually hindering me.
Well, you've shared that when you were working in finance you started having panic attacks. What do you think drove those and did those change how you were thinking about your career? Yeah?
I mean when I was in this place of giving pits every day or doing client pitches in a boardroom, or I would be so stressed out and I couldn't understand why. And I was on all these different time zones because when the market opens in Portugal, it's the middle of the night here, but then you know, I still have to keep up with San Francisco and that's three hours behind. It was not I didn't have a body clock, and I didn't again, I was in my twenties.
I was burning the candle at both ends with this job. And then I think what happened with my subconscious knowing that I wasn't doing the thing that I loved, and I wasn't experiencing any art, and I wasn't going to any therapy or talking to anybody or confiding in anybody. Is that stress is a silent killer. It really does kill. In my experience, it manifested itself through sweating and my heart rate going through the roof and feeling like I
was going to die. But I couldn't understand what that was. I didn't know what anxiety was. I didn't know what panic attacks were. I sort of just thought, like, gosh, am I getting nervous for these meetings. I don't understand why I would be so every single day too, You're going out to lunches, and in order to quell the anxiety, you're having like three glasses of wine with lunch, and
then you're doing the same thing at dinner. So that became a whole other you know, well, in order to get rid of my anxiety, I've got to have a drink. And so it kind of was this hand in hand thing. It was very very slippery slope at that point in my life. Did that make you think that you were eventually going to leave? Like?
Was that a pivot point? Where is that what we call sort of like the intervening life event where we start to think about what's making us happy at that point or not making us happy and precipitates the change.
Yeah, I mean, I think there was. It was a very night light sprinkling of what's going on here, but not really understanding how to figure that out. And I mean my pivot moment, my true pivot moment, was when kind of the universe stepped in and I was sitting in my office. At this point, I was promoted to my own office, so I had people underneath me, and I had been sitting in my office and I again totally sort of checked out, disassociating, knocked something over, saw
a note that fell out of a folder. I don't know where or how this happened from my grandmother that said I wish you all the luck in the world that she wrote to me, like after a theater show or something. And that's when I was like, I gotta go. I have to go. I don't know how. I don't literally know how to go. But that kicked off the pivot of the next six months of how to make the transition.
When we come back, Jessica walks us through the mechanics of her calculated but nevertheless scary pivot out of her stable job in finance.
I have to go. I don't know how. I don't literally know how to go. But that kicked off the pivot of the next six months of how to make the transition. I had concepts of like, Okay, I need to leave this job. So what I want to do is I want to sing. I want to be back in that life. Okay, how am I going to do that?
Well?
I had kind of met a couple of people within the business. I had been going to this open mic night every Monday night after work was over. I'd have to wait till eleven pm every Monday night to try and get hurt on this open mic night. And I met people through that, and I thought, Okay, I've got a network here and figure out how to get in like the right room. How am I supposed to audition? I don't have an agent. I called my parents. I was like, okay, I'm leaving this job, and they were
like no, no, no, reverse. So they were pretty scared nervous. Again, like my father in an interview a couple of years ago said to ABC or something like I thought this was like the worst decision she's ever made. So no, I didn't have a plan. I just knew I had to get laid off because that was the only way I can collect unemployment. I knew that that if I quit, I couldn't collect unemployment. If I quit, I wouldn't get severance, you know, all of that kind of like stuff about
how to. And in the interim I decided to put together a concert and do a concert and invite all the finance people to come see it at the Lori beachmanth Theater on forty second Street between nine and ten in the basement, and make everybody come see it. As am I like, this is what I want to do than while I was still at the job. I don't know what I was thinking, but I did it. And subsequently the market crashed in O eight and I skillfully
got laid off. So what happened is the chirp, chirp chatter of the real estate crash happening, the big banks going under, etc. Was around the office. I knew we would either get acquired by a London company or you know, in order for us to stay afloat with our clientele. So I was like, Okay, how do I do this. I go into the HR office and I was like, hey, guys, pleasure listen. I was just wondering if you were looking for anybody to volunteer to be laid off because I
will do that. And they were like, you just got promoted, and I said, oh, well, I'm just saying that if you were looking for it, and they were like, this conversation never happened. I think one of the girls who I was close with had a chat with my boss and I got an email from him saying a couple of weeks later saying, hey, can I see you in my office? And I think anybody else who got this email in life would probably be like fuck no no. I was like, yes, this is it, God like it was.
It was that moment for me. I remember going in there, sitting down, you know, totally faking the O you know, I can't believe and get it laid off, and of course he probably faked it too, and everybody thought I was nuts. Everyone thought I was nuts, said I would get a certain amount of severance, YadA, YadA, YadA. I left. I don't remember how soon after I left, but you know, made sure everybody with kids knew that I could babysit their kids and kept in touch with them and kind
of supplemented as much as I could. And that was that.
Yeah, how did you once you left the stability, the thing that you had, that thing that you had been organizing your life around. How did you make it work once you started? Was it auditioning?
Because you were.
Also probably you know, a number of years behind everyone else in experience that had been Yeah.
Way behind, way behind. I mean, I'm at this point mid to late twenties. Kids are on Broadway now at twenty two, twenty one, nineteen. So I was so late to the party. I would show up every day at six am at the Equity building. I was not an equity performer. This is back in the day where you had to sign up in person, not online. Rarely would you get seen if you were not equity. So it was it was so hard, man, it was. It was really hellish. My supplemental income was babysitting. You know, you
can only collect unemployment for so long. And I just kept doing the same thing over and over and it is really exhausting. And I know people who do it for you know, a living day in and day out, and it is That's so I respect performers so much because you have to keep putting yourself out there for people who don't really give a shit. At the end of the day. A lot of these are required calls. They have to do these calls. You're never going to get a phone call about it. And that's what I did.
And it was it's a bit soul sucking. Didn't make your question your decision. Oh sure, I questioned that. I questioned my decision every day. I was like, and now I don't have health insurance. Now I don't have a four oh one k. Now I don't have a salary coming at every single week. And I wasn't good with my money back then. I spent all of my money when I was at that job. I spent it on clothes. I spent it on booze, I spent it on dinner,
I spent it on travel. I did you know, It's not like I sat and saved a bunch of money. So it's a bit of a wake up call.
The difficulty of making it all work started to wear on her audition after audition, she was hustling to make her dreams come true, and what started as a casual drink here and there turned into a way to cope.
I mean, this is probably the first time ever on an interview where I'm going to say that I relied so much on alcohol to get me through the latter couple of years of that that I wound up with such a problem with alcohol that I had to, at the age twenty nine, go to a rehab for twenty days. And I've never publicly talked about that before. First of all, for the first time in my life, I can say that I told everybody I would never go into a program of rehab. No, no, no, I am way better
than these people. I am not as bad as these people. And then it was one of those things where I had to actually talk to my parents about it, and they said, no, you're going, and I was like, I'm not,
and they won. And then when I got there, I remember being very taken aback because I was there with lawyers, and I was there with doctors, and I was there with pharmacists, and I was there with nurses, and I was there with all of these people who I held in high regard in life circumstances, who all had the
same problems that I did. And those twenty days of my life was the first time that I ever had tools put into a toolbox of how to handle emotion and how to handle mental health and how to handle anxiety and possible depression and how to handle the fact that we're all addicted to something. So I didn't have the use of my phone at that time, which is another addiction. I didn't have the ability to talk to
really the outside world. I had therapy. I had therapy, really for the first time in my life, to have to sit and really do therapy, and then you learn who you are. By the time I had left again only like thirty days, but I had turned thirty, and I remember feeling so different and at the time that I had gotten into those first thirty days, it was I'm so much better than all of you. I don't need to be here. And by the time I left, I was like, you know what, none of us are different.
What a wild thing for me to have such an ego ego about this. But I think it's important to my story because that kind of year of my life, at the end of my twenties, not having I had
done a couple of like really amazing things. I had done Carnegie Hall, a concert at Carnegie Hall with Abba, and I had done a show with the San Francisco Symphony, And I think it's important for people to know that I worked really hard to even be seen for those to like word of mouth, have somebody be like, Jessica has a good voice, you should bring her in for this thing. That my brain got ahead of myself and I thought, these are going to be my big break.
This is going to be like it for me when I play Carnegie Hall for the first time, and then when I do the San Francisco Symphony, this is going to be everybody's going to want to hire me. And it was not that. So after that is when I just like it was a downward spiral for a year where it or I hit a rock bottom that I believe was necessary and another impetus for a massive pivot point in my life to get where I am now. And all of it ties together because by the time
I left is when I booked Broadway show. So I had been sober only for a few months, maybe three or four, and I had gotten called in to audition for a Broadway show and I didn't again. I don't know how that happened, but back when I had been sort of like auditioning all the time, a casting company kept my headshot and resume. I wasn't right for the thing, but they decided to keep it and bring me in for this other thing, and it turns out I booked it.
And I just remember saying like, this would have never happened if I didn't just go get sober booze, I, this never would have happened.
Do you think that the rehab gave you access to the both the emotional tools to be able to book, but also the fortitude to get through it.
Yeah, I mean I think it gives you vulnerability, right, I really stand very firmly on the fact that I think being vulnerable is a superpower that not a lot of people are willing to access. Is a scary and you have to be vulnerable if you're in a situation where you're talking about the thing that took you to the worst, most low part of your life, where you've had to you've had to crawl out of that hole by yourself, without help. And so yeah, I learned a
lot about emotional capability. I was way more open. I was willing to show a lot more of myself. Was I ever willing, really until this moment with you publicly to say I was in a rehab?
No.
I was very embarrassed about it for years, for years, So that again, I have not ever publicly said it. People know I don't drink, but nobody knows that I got help. So again, in that American idol sense, there was this kind of embarrassment again where I felt like I embarrassed my family and I felt like I had put people through this awful thing on my behalf. And so for a long time it was a very dark,
dark thing for me to talk about. And now I'm ten years into my Broadway career or I just celebrated ten years, and I would never be here had I not gone through that, I never would be here because I never would have had the tools.
Those tools finally landed her her first role on Broadway. She made her debut in Bridges of Madison County as a swing. We dive into what it entails to be a swing and what came next for Jessica after the break, And can you just explain because our podcast audience is not on the theater lovers, although I imagine we were probably over index for this episode, but just explain what a swing is.
I think it's pretty critical to understanding for your role here. So a swing is typically hired on a Broadway show. There are a number of swings hired on Broadway shows to cover various tracks who are on stage. So in particular for the Verges of Madison County, I was hired as the female swing to cover six different female roles, so if one of them was out, I would have
to be able to go on. There are people who make a career out of this who have done twelve Broadway shows because they hop from show to show to show because they have the again brain to sort of play tetris and say, okay, I can go on for this role right now, and then I'll go on for that. I am satanically bad at being swing. I mean truly had to be handheld, walked around the stage, somebody telling me where to go, what to do, how to act,
what line to say. I mean, it was it was really I was a terrorist at it, so uh and it was my own one and done. I never was a swing on a show again, and so yes it is. It is actually the hardest role on Broadway.
Though, because you had to know six different roles, and it can happen at the drop of a half, driving you like you won't know that day which role you're going to do.
That's right, which is Wild. It's disgusting. I'm not good at it. I really like I got I got my way in to Broadway by being a swing and saying yes to being a swing.
Never even though you were bad at it, you were still able to book jumb after. I'm presuming you were pretty good once you were on the stage.
Yes, and I and I you know again, I'm a big believer in the universe. And I happened to have one show scheduled where I went on for a principal track in Virgis of Medicine, and the composer lyricist Jason mar Brown, who wrote the show, happened to be conducting that night, so we had this moment where he got to see me sing and do my thing on stage. And after that we really started working together a lot
more outside of the theater. So that led to again casting seeing me for the next show, which was Finding Neverland. And then after Finding Neverland, I went into Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway with Danny Burstein, and after Fiddler on the Roof came Wicked. So it was all very fast. It was maybe within the span of three years.
Fifteenth Anniversary Company of Wicked, Please welcome Jessica boss.
Was sweet Summer, chaphire, scot Feasting, York Billy feasting or gush to apologize it.
You want. And then when you booked Wicked, is that when you felt like, was that like your I made it moment? Did you have one? Yeah?
That was it. That was my like, I'm leading a company on Broadway. My parents are able to come see this. They had seen me on tour, yes, but it was that like, I'm here on Broadway as a leading lady, you know, booking Broadway for the first time. I've baby made it moment for me. It's a very large I've made it moment for everybody, But for me, I still wanted I still needed to do other things. I still
had other places to go for Jessica. So by the time Alphaba came around and it was Broadway and then I hired a press team and ABC did a profile, Dateline did a profile and my parents were involved and they got interviewed. So now I have that footage. It was this very very wild, book ended thing because within that ABC interview, all the finance people got interviewed. So to have my life laid out like that with all of those people was very very full circle for me.
That's the very full circle thing that I will always remember. Just really impressed everybody with her energy level. She worked incredibly hard. And nothing seemed to face her. It's definitely the emotion of she's founded and she's so happy, and I think as a mom, he says, I can't even.
That's why.
It's wild to kind of see these people who hired me when I was this kid out of college being interviewed and going like, well, we thought, what are you doing? You know, I mean, And that's also kind of it's
just helpful. My feet have always very been firmly planted on the ground because I had these massive setbacks of like, okay, I worked in finance, and then I got laid off, and then I was able to babysit everybody, and then I had a couple of cool little moments of big things happened to me that I thought were going to be huge. Then everything came crashing down and I had to build everything back up again. So it gives you a lot of humbling energy because I don't walk around
like I'm owed any of this. I don't walk around with the attitude of a diva or I'm so good or you owe me. I know exactly what it's like to lose and to fall and to have to get back up again.
Once you got the role, did it meet your expectations of what it would be like to do it for a year on Broadway?
Oh god no. I mean the show itself is phenomenal, but it's a really hard it's a hard track. I mean, you're you're leading a Broadway company. There's a lot of expectation. You know. I had done the fifteenth anniversary, so that was a whole other, you know, huge amount of press added to an already big show, and that's when the talks of the movie had started happening. And that's you know,
Mark Platt, who is the producer of the film. He's mostly based in la with with NBC Universal, but he came by and we had a lovely chat and he was very very kind with you know, the energy that I had brought into the show for the fifteenth anniversary. So there were a lot of amazing parts of that really put me on the map. So there's there's this double edged sort of how hard it is and how much you learn about your strength, especially as a woman,
because we just are treated differently. I don't care if anybody argues with me. It's just a fact. So there's there's that, and then there's this beauty of being able to play this this role that so many people respond to.
Look, I think both things can be true. Like you can go through something that is incredibly difficult and it's worth it. Yes, Yes, I don't have to say I regret it. You know the place that it got you it was worth it, Yes, it really was. And I don't There's there are a few things that I'll ever say, like I really regret I don't even regret going to read. I don't regret drinking, none of that. There's really few things I will say I regret. I never will regret Wicked.
Wicked was one of the best things that's ever happened to me and my career, But because of how difficult it was, it taught me a ton about self love and resilience.
What is something that at the time you saw as a negative or low point, but now in hindsight you really see it as a positive that put you on this path.
The negative low point was probably rehab. Yeah, outside of leaving finance, thinking I made the worst decision in the world auditioning for a couple months, nobody calling, thinking that I'd become fams and not becoming famous. I mean, I had to learn that expectation is really the enemy of success in my opinion. That's just my opinion. The more I expect, the less I get. You can only expect things from yourself. You can't expect it from anybody else
or anything else. So I can expect perfection from myself. I'll never deliver on perfection. I can deliver on you know, practice and progress. I can't expect it from anybody else. I can't expect to be called with the job. I can expect to ready myself for the job. But any of these other things that I thought were going to happen, right, I did this thing, people heard me saying, I expect
to be a leading lady. Doesn't work that way. So that's the stuff that I learned in that I'm the only one that can actually do anything about my life without expecting anybody else to follow suit.
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Oh? Yeah, girl, I love a pivot. I love a pivot. I don't know what it'll be, but just keeping the options open. Yeah, I mean that's I think my happy place is. You know, my happy place is challenge. I'm going into Hell's Kitchen. It's an Alicia Keyes musical. I'm
known for Broadway. This is pop and I'm massively challenged every day at this show and question myself every day and have to remind myself that I asked for these challenges, and so who knows what the next challenge will be, But I focused on this one right now because even this is a tiny pivot from what Broadway is. So what the next thing will be, I don't know, but but I will. As I like to say, I do not like to half asked. I like to use my whole ass.
Okay, wait, before I let you go, I have to ask your thoughts on the Wicked movie because I know you and Arianna are friends.
I mean, Ariana Grande and I became quite close when I did fifteenth Anniversary of Broadway because we did an NBC special together, so we stayed in touch, and she called me when she booked it, and I was so thrilled for her because we had been talking about it
for so many months. And then I flew to London and we had like a nice little dinner together and chatted about the experience when she was filming, and I remember at the time she was so focused on getting it right and paying a really beautiful tribute to Kristin Chenow with an homage to the show itself. And I think she did all of those things. I think they both did. I think again, Mark Platt is a genius and really assembled a team of avengers together to put
the best film version of this show out. And I'm very proud of Ariana, which she knows, and her capability to sort of step out of her comfort zone of I'm a pop singer, I go on tour, YadA yadeah, and to go back to her roots of but I can also do this other thing. And I think she knocked it out of the park. I loved it. I had a great time at the screening.
I was at well. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks guys, so great to have you on.
I'm so happy that we did this. Thank you so much for making it happen. Oh my god, I'm so happy.
Jessica is still gracing us with her performance in Hell's Kitchen. So if you're in New York, be sure to grab tickets Plus, Jessica is hosting the Tony Awards Red Carpet this Sunday. Tune into New York One to see her, and finally, be sure to following her on Instagram at Jessica Voss for more. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us a rating and tell
your friends about us. To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter, where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on our website at she pivots
thepodcast dot com. Special thanks to the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily At, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeleine Sonoviak, and audio editor and mixer Nina Pollock.
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