Just a day before her June 7 Broadway debut, Melissa Benoist stepped off the Stephen Sondheim Theatre stage to discuss her star turn in Broadway’s Beautiful. The Supergirl and Glee favorite takes on the role of Carole King—a music legend Benoist is no stranger to.
“It was in my household all the time,” Benoist says of King’s album Tapestry—the first vinyl her mother bought. “I always had an emotional, sentimental connection to it. She’s so emotive when she sings it.”
That emotional connection is in part due to the universality of the themes King explores in her lyrics. “She’s a normal person, and that’s how she saw herself,” Benoist explains. “But she isn’t—specifically in this time in her life that we portray. Because she is a creative genius. So not everyone can relate to that because we’re not all creative geniuses, but what they can relate to is—she just has this fortitude and resilience dealing with heartbreak and trauma.”
“She is her own kind of Supergirl,” she adds. “For sure.”
Benoist is scheduled to play a limited run through August 4.
