Alyssa Milano Embraces Her Own Strengths and Roxie’s Weaknesses in Her Chicago Broadway Debut

Chicago—John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse’s musical about sex, jazz and cold-blooded murder—exists in the chasm between bitter reality and burlesque-flavored fantasy. One moment, an innocent immigrant finds herself on death row. The next, a criminal attorney is crooning in a sea of pink feathers.

Alyssa Milano is making her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart, the most willing dreamer of them all, who jumps at the chance to turn her trial for homicide into a theatrical experience for the ages. It’s as entertaining as it is delusional, and that’s the energy Milano—who audiences are used to seeing on the small screen—is grasping in this leap of faith to the stage.

“I’m not a professional dancer; I’m not a professional singer,” Milano bluntly tells Broadway Show host Tamsen Fadal in a sitdown interview. On top of that, she adds, “I’m only five-two on a really proud day.” It might not be the ideal makings of a Millie Dillmount, but it works well for a Roxie Hart lost in visions of grandeur.

“What I bring to this character is someone who wanted to be all those things, but didn’t quite have what it takes,” Milano says. She lands on “naïve” as Roxie’s signature quality—not ditzy, dumb or even deranged as she could be played. Her choices are impetuous and maybe ill-advised, but she makes them with two feet flat on the ground. “She always knows how to get her way,” Milano says of Roxie. “She always is falling up. And to me, someone who falls up all the time has to be really intelligent and street-smart.”

Every stumble upward, of course, is met with a song to sing and exacting Fosse choreography to execute—indelible requirements for being Roxie, even if her imagination outpaces her talent. “It took me until like three days ago for my body to go, ‘Oh, we’re doing all of this at once,’” Milano laughs. In the three weeks she had to learn the role, opportunities to put all the moving pieces together were few and far between. She hadn’t even performed with the Chicago orchestra until her opening night, doing all of her prep with a simple rehearsal piano.

“I remember the first or second night sitting there—I’d be like, ‘Is that a banjo?’”

That’s show biz, kid.