The Stars Of School Girls Answer Actual Pageant Questions

It took almost nine years for Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play to make the leap from off-Broadway to Broadway, but it’s finally made it. And while, at first glance, a comedy about girls in 1986 Ghana might not seem relevant in 2026 New York, the play’s exploration of social hierarchy and colorism makes it ever current.

The piece centers on a group of girls at a Ghanaian boarding school, but instead of prepping for a big test, they are focused on prepping for a recruiter from the Miss Ghana pageant (Tony winner Patina Miller). Paulina (Tony nominee Denée Benton) is the mean queen bee of the group, and she believes she is going to get the school’s slot at the pageant. But when a lighter-skinned, well-liked transfer student (Tony nominee Jasmine Amy Rogers) enters the picture, her plans are thrown into question.

The Whitney White-directed production — which runs through Nov. 15 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and features an all-female, all-Black ensemble — is part satire, part soap opera, and part cultural study. It also includes pageant questions, of course. In keeping with that theme, and the fact that Miss Ghana is a real-life feeder to the Miss World pageant, we put recent beauty pageant questions to the full cast. Below, the cast members weigh in on their ideal woman, how to deal with the body-shaming epidemic, and more.

1. If you could live one year in another woman’s shoes, who would you choose, and why?

Denée Benton: Eloise of the Plaza. She’s not real, but I want to live in a hotel for a year, order room service, and go shopping.

Patina Miller: I don’t know I’d want to live in another woman’s shoes because I love my life and journey. I think everybody’s journey is tailored to them. I don’t covet anyone else’s life. I love my own.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Michelle Obama. She’s brilliant, and I would love to experience what her mind goes through in the day.

Erin Morton: My mom, so I can see how she perceives me as her daughter. Also, with her being a single parent and having so many things that you have to do and pay for, I think being her would help with my appreciation for what she does for me.

Heather Alicia Simms: Oprah. She has great shoes and she opened a school in Africa. I would love to know what that experience was like, especially as someone coming from the entertainment business. I would love to know what lessons I can learn for myself.

Lucia Aremu: Marie Antoinette, because I love cake. I’d want the chance to just eat cake and sweets for an entire year. I know she was a mean person but I just want to eat pastries uninhibited for a year and wear beautiful dresses.

Nia Otchere-Sarfo: A woman in Congo or Sudan to get an idea of what things are really like there. Though we have our own struggles, we’re very privileged. Then, when I return to myself, I’d have an awareness of how I could potentially help.

Jordan Rice: I would choose to be Zendaya. She has had an amazing career and she’s really kind. And she’s married to Tom Holland — that would be really cool.

2. Describe the ideal woman of today and what you have in common with her.

Benton: She is very free and embodied in her desire and has access to pleasure and brilliance. I have all of those things in common with her.

Miller: She is strong, she’s confident, and she walks into any room and commands the space. She gives herself grace; she’s kind; she is the friend that everyone wants to have. What I have in common with her is that I try to lead with kindness. I believe in myself and I believe in helping those around me.

Rogers: She is fearless, fun, carefree, loving. She is an activist. She cares about the people around her and doesn’t care about what people think of her. I try to be like that.

Morton: Someone who is brave, who is authentically themselves. Like her, I am living my life with no regrets.

Simms: She is a woman who knows herself. I believe that I do know myself.

Aremu: She is very outspoken and liberated, financially and emotionally. I’m not very similar to her, but I’m trying to live more freely and not hold everything so close to my chest.

Otchere-Sarfo: Someone who is true to herself, who prioritizes herself. I think that too often women are taught to be of service to others first before we tend to ourselves — but we cannot put the oxygen mask on someone else if we can’t put it on ourselves first. I was raised that way. I was raised to take care of Nia and stay true to Nia.

Rice: She’s a baddie. She looks amazing — hair edges laid, everything is amazing. And she has her dream career, which I think that’s how we relate. She also has work-life balance. I’m not there yet, but she is.

3. When something bad is happening in your life, what gives you power to keep going?

Benton: Making time to be alone in nature and remember what’s beautiful about being alive. And revenge fame — that’s been fueling me since I was 7.

Miller: I just go back to reminding myself of that young girl with a dream who wanted so desperately to do what I’m doing right now. I think about how blessed I am with the people in my life and I try to look at all the positive things.

Rogers: It’s the people around me, my loved ones, my friends, and my dog, and remembering that I’m important — what I’m going through matters, my life on this Earth matters, and other people care and are listening.

Morton: I’m a true motivator within myself. I feel like living in New York City, if you don’t have your people here, you kind of have to rely on your own thing.

Simms: My faith gives me power and my faith is rooted in my family. I think about where my family came from and how they’ve overcome so many things. That gives me strength — knowing that they put their faith in God. I go, “All right, that is what I’m doing.”

Aremu: Remembering the times when I’ve had it worse and I didn’t fail. If that doesn’t work, I just find a sweet treat. That really holds me over until I can breathe again.

Otchere-Sarfo: An awareness of the woman who I came from. My mom is a very strong woman. She is a single parent. It was always my promise to her to make sure that whatever I did in my life, I was going to repay her for her sacrifices.

Rice: My faith is something that gives me the power to keep going. God has been so kind to me and so amazing. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know where I would be. Maybe dead.

4. If this was your last day on Earth, how would you live it?

Benton: I would be naked on a beach with some mangos and great music and my favorite people. Then we would have a dance party.

Miller: I would try and do all the things that I could do. I would spend time with my family. I would eat all of my most favorite things. I would sing as many songs as I could. I’d maybe run around with no clothes. Maybe I’d ride through New York City with my head out the taxicab and scream and scream and scream.

Rogers: I would just spend it with my friends and family and my dog. I’d want to get all together somewhere, who knows where, and just exist together and laugh.

Morton: I would call my mom and have our last conversation. The loved ones who I could spend it with, I would. There would be a lot of phone calls and texts.

Simms: I would eat the things that I want. I would be unabashed. I would just live and say amen.

Aremu: Go and get the biggest cake ever. Then I would go to Disneyland. Honestly, it would be eating. Just pigging out and cussing out the people who I’ve always wanted to cuss out.

Otchere-Sarfo: With my mom.

Rice: I’d be going on Hot Ones with Sean Evans. I’m eating all that food. Then I’ll be going on Mythical Kitchen and eating my last meal. Then I would go skydiving again. It’s amazing. After that, I’m going to get a massage.

5. How can women best handle body-shaming?

Benton: Go be naked on a beach. Remember what feels good about your body physically, sensation over visibility. It’ll bring you back.

Miller: Easy — just don’t listen to those bleep-bleepers. It’s so hard to be a woman judged by your appearance. But body shaming can only affect you if you let it affect you. If you have love for yourself, no matter if somebody calls you fat or whatever, it doesn't matter.

Rogers: Understanding that your body is the thing that carries you through life. So it’s more so feeling that “Hey, I love my body because it does these amazing things for me,” as opposed to “This is what I look like.”

Morton: It’s about loving yourself. The world has such a huge expectation of what the perfect body should look like, and the more we continue to try to break that narrative, the better it will be.

Simms: We just have to stand in front of a mirror every once in a while and go, “This is it.” Because we do it to ourselves often times. We look at other bodies, and we wish we had that; then somebody is looking at us like, “I wish I had that.” Someone is wanting exactly what you have — you just need to love it.

Aremu: I still struggle with it. But you have to have a community of other women to rely on. I know that’s rich to say, because some girls don’t have girlfriends, but whoever is that battery behind you, relying on them really helps. When it happens to me, I know they’ll be like, “Girl, please.”

Otchere-Sarfo: What needs to be taught a lot sooner is this idea that our bodies were not created for the male gaze. With that will come a lot more healing.

Rice: Your body is constantly changing. The body you have today is not the body you’re going to have tomorrow. So, I try to appreciate every single body that I get. It’s like you get to be different people throughout your life. You cute at every size.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.