Curtain Call
Smash Star Robyn Hurder Is Embracing The Moment
“In my late 20s I said, ‘My prime is going to be in my late 30s, early 40s. I know it.’”
“I get a little cuckoo when I don’t get to have that proper balance of home life,” Robyn Hurder tells me over the phone. The actor had been staying at an apartment while preparing for the Broadway opening of Smash, only returning to her family and home north of the city on days off. Now that the show’s opened, she’s making the most of being back with her husband and child full-time. “I can see my son and I am cooking dinner for the first time today,” she adds. “I feel more in touch with myself again.”
Hurder stars as Ivy Lynn in the new musical, which is based on the NBC television series of the same name and follows the making of Bombshell, a fictional Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe. While the stage adaptation isn’t a direct retelling of the original TV show, some of the original characters and story arcs remain (as do many of the popular songs such as “Let Me Be Your Star”).
The Maine native, who caught the acting bug at a young age, made her debut on the Great White Way 20 years ago this month in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She’s also appeared in Grease, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and, playing Nini in Moulin Rouge, received a Tony Award nomination in 2020. Below, she reflects on her career, the TV series that has made her a Broadway star, and how she gets herself ready to do eight shows a week.
On her first Broadway memory:
My parents brought me to New York for the first time when I was 11 years old, and I saw Damn Yankees and that changed my whole world. I saw Bebe Neuwirth and I went to my mom and I was like, “That’s what I wanna be when I grow up.” That was really when I was like, “Oh, I need to be on Broadway.” I would love to revive Ms. Lola one day.
On doing pre-show cardio:
I will always get to the theater two hours before the show starts. I start with a dance cardio workout for about 15 minutes. I need to get my heart rate up and sweat on. I usually do my dear friend Amanda Kloots’ cardio workout — we were on the Spamalot tour together almost 20 years ago. I’ve been doing her workout for probably seven, eight years now.
On her favorite sequence from the TV show:
I watched the first season [of Smash] and loved it. I fell off the second season because I was pregnant, and that was a whole new world for me. But I loved the first season mainly for the songs, the production numbers, the choreography, the music. I was like, “This is epic. This is going to be a Broadway show next year.” It’s no secret that I really, really love Megan [Hilty, who played Ivy] and “Let’s Be Bad,” that whole sequence — the whole moment of her feeling that pressure in rehearsal. I just would watch it over and over and over again and be like, “I need to do that on Broadway.” So every night, when I actually get to do it, I’m really living my dream.
On playing jazz in her dressing room:
I always have little twinkle lights up, and I just like to set a very sensual, sexy, kind of glamorous vibe in the room. I have a Victrola that plays records so when people come over, I put a record on. And whatever record I’m playing, I’ll put the cover in the window so people know it’s on. I’m such a jazz girl. Right now, I’ve got this anthology of Glenn Miller. But sometimes I switch to Stan Getz, or Ted Baker, or Ella [Fitzgerald], or Louis [Armstrong].
Jazz is literally my soundtrack — when I wake up in the morning, I put on morning jazz. It’s always playing. It just centers me. It’s my form of meditation. When I’m cooking, when I’m outside, when I’m walking around the city, I always have jazz on.
On what true success looks like:
My goal has always been, “I want to be a star on Broadway. I want to win a Tony one day.” But I knew that wasn’t what I wanted immediately, I wanted to experience every single aspect of this business. Because dance is my first love, it’s my first thing, it’s my safety net, I wanted to begin in the ensemble. And then I wanted to take the next step and understudy someone. And then I would love to try to do a role, or originate a role, or do a role regionally. My entire career, I’ve been taking steps up a mountain. And I feel like now, when I talk to the younger generation of people who are going through a hard time or want advice, I can relate to them and maybe I can help them.
And that, to me, is the real success — that I feel I’ve really worked my way from the ground up to get here. And even though [Smash] has been the highlight obviously of my career, I still will forever in my heart and soul be an ensembleist.
I’m really proud of myself that I did it the way I wanted to do it. In my late 20s I said, “My prime is going to be in my late 30s, early 40s. I know it.” And you can ask my husband. I would talk about it all the time.
