Why Landing Her Broadway Debut in Hadestown Made Pretty Little Liars Star Maia Reficco Sob to an ‘Embarrassingly Catastrophic Level’

Age: 24

Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Current Role: Maia Reficco plays Eurydice in Hadestown, the 2019 Tony-winning musical featuring a book and score by Anaïs Mitchell and directed by Rachel Chavkin.

Credits: Reficco’s breakout role was as Kally Ponce in the Nickelodeon Latin America show Kally’s Mashup. She appeared in the 2022 dark comedy Do Revenge, starring Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke, and currently stars as Noa Olivar on the series Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. On stage, she played Young Eva in the 2019 New York City Center production of Evita and Natalie in the 2020 Broadway Center Stage production of Next to Normal at the Kennedy Center.

Mama Who Gave Me
“My house was a music house,” says Reficco. “There’s photos of me as a literal baby trying to play the piano. It was always what I wanted to do.” Her mother was a vocal coach and speech therapist; her godfather was a pianist; and a substantial contingent of her extended family worked at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she lived the first four years of her life. The family later relocated to Buenos Aires, Argentina. “Then my mom started working in musical theater and that became the thing for me.” When Reficco was 10, her mother directed an Argentinian production of Spring Awakening. She embraced her role as the precocious kid hanging around rehearsals. “I became obsessed,” she remembers. “I would do my hair the way that they did it on the show.” During the musical’s racier scenes, an assistant would be on hand to escort her out of the theater. “I did not know what ‘Mama Who Bore Me’ meant. I didn’t know anything. And I loved it.”

Maia’s Mashup
The musical influences were varied in Reficco’s childhood. “I grew up around so many legendary bands and artists from Argentina,” she says, listing off Fito Páez, Luis Alberto Spinetta and Serú Girán. Her father introduced her to ‘60s R&B: Aretha Franklin, The Jackson Five and her "favorite artist ever,” Stevie Wonder. Pop divas like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey also featured heavily on the soundtrack of her upbringing. Show tunes, on the other hand, “were a me thing.” The “me” also included Reficco’s younger brother, who joined her in the Broadway fever. “We’d belt Wicked like our life depended on it,” she reminisces, acknowledging how thoroughly they embodied every “musical theater kid” cliché. “That was a loud house—a very loud house,” she laughs. “Our poor mother.”

The Orange Years
“The first big audition I ever did was for the Nickelodeon show that I did for five years,” says Reficco. That show was Kally’s Mashup, a Spanish-language series about a 13-year-old piano prodigy who dreams of pop stardom. It ran for two seasons from 2017 to 2019, and was buttoned in 2021 with the movie, Kally's Mashup: Un Cumpleaños Muy Kally. “My mom didn't want me to work, to be honest,” Reficco says. “But I drove them crazy enough to the point that they let me audition.” Her parents were concerned about her ability to balance an acting career with school, so she became hyper-proactive on both fronts. “I was very obsessive with the way that I tackled it,” she acknowledges. “It was a lot. But I think had I not done that, I wouldn't be as diligent.”

A Little Touch of Star Quality
After wrapping Kally’s Mashup, Reficco finished high school while doing theater in Buenos Aires. Near the end of 2019, she landed her first New York stage role—Young Eva in Evita at New York City Center—closely followed by a stint as Natalie in Next to Normal at the Kennedy Center, helmed by the show’s original director Michael Greif. “Whenever anybody would ask me what my favorite thing I've ever done was, it was always Evita and Next to Normal,” says Reficco. “Especially my first bow at a Evita,” she stresses. “I will never forget that. It just reminded me how alive theater is and how alive it makes me feel.” During Evita, she happened to share the stage—and the title role—with Solea Pfeiffer, who became Hadestown’s second full-time Eurydice in 2023. “I went crazy when they announced Solea,” Reficco says, owning her status as “fangirl” of both her former castmate and the show, which she saw with the original cast in 2019. “I was all over TikTok watching Solea’s ‘slime tutorials’” (code for “bootlegs,” for those not fluent in internet speak). “Sorry, Broadway,” she adds contritely. “We all do it.”

Six Degrees of Rachel Chavkin
Reficco was shooting the Netflix romcom La Dolce Villa when she got the call from Hadestown. “I was sobbing to an embarrassingly catastrophic level,” she shares. “There was no universe in which I ever thought that would be possible.” She hadn’t even tossed her hat in the ring, but she had been auditioning for Gatsby—another Rachel Chavkin project, which recently finished its world-premiere run at the American Repertory Theater. “I think that’s the connection,” Reficco posits, putting the clues together (Gatsby ended up featuring Pfeiffer as well as Reficco’s Next to Normal co-star, Ben Levi Ross). One of the people on hand for Reficco’s ecstatic breakdown happened to be her onscreen father, Scott Foley, who had worked with Chavkin on The Thanksgiving Play in 2023. “He took a photo and sent it to Rachel,” Reficco remembers. “I was losing my mind, but I'm very grateful that he captured that moment.” The actress also has video of the moment she shared the news with her mother: “It's just two Latin-American women screaming over the phone.”

To the World We Dream About
“I enjoy every single second on that stage,” says Reficco, now a month into her run at the Walter Kerr. She knows that audiences are more likely to know her from her popular TV show Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin than from her work on stage—a double-edged sword of notoriety. “I definitely feel at times the stigma being projected onto me,” she says, referring to the optics of TV and film stars cutting the line to Broadway. “But in all honesty, I am a theater person. I did so much more theater than I've ever done TV and film. The thing is, people don’t find out about it unless you’re on Broadway.” She admits the chatter can be hurtful, but, “The only thing I can do is work really hard and do my best.” A personalized moment that she's been allowed to weave into each of her Hadestown performances has also proven energizing. “I speak Spanish in the show very briefly,” she teases, noting that she can tell “when my people are there” based on the crowd reaction. “It’s very exciting every time,” Reficco says proudly. “As a Latino, this country is very alienating. Getting to add that and instantly feel a sense of community on stage with the people that you're telling the story to is very special.”