Sutton Foster celebrates her fairytale Broadway career

The two-time Tony Award-winning actress is now playing Princess Winnifred, a role originated by Carol Burnett, in the musical classic Once Upon a Mattress.

Once upon a time, before she was one of Broadway's most in-demand stars, Sutton Foster was —

Actually, let's let her tell the story.

"Once upon a time, a young girl from Georgia was forced to take dance lessons, but ended up liking it," the two-time Tony Award winner said with a laugh. "On a whim, [she] auditioned for a local musical theatre show and fell in love with singing and dancing and being in front of an audience."

Flash forward a few decades to the present day, and Foster is starring as Princess Winnifred in Once Upon a Mattress, the musical adaptation of "The Princess and the Pea." It's a fitting part for Foster, whose Broadway career has been a fairytale on stage and off.

The story of Foster's rise to fame is legend in the theatre world. She understudied the title role of 2002's Thoroughly Modern Millie, assumed the part full-time nine days before Broadway performances began, and ultimately won the Tony for it.

The actress has since ruled the stage in one iconic musical comedy role after another: Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes (Tony no. 2), Marian Paroo in The Music Man, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, and even another onstage princess: Fiona in Shrek The Musical.

"I love making people laugh," Foster said. "I love telling stories and helping audiences have experiences, hopefully, where they feel something. They laugh, they cry, their world is made a little bit brighter. And I love finding humor in everything."

Since the Millie days, Foster's physical comedy chops have earned her comparisons to comic legends including Carol Burnett — who originated the role of Winnifred in 1959 and has praised Foster's performance more than once.

Where both these Broadway queens differ from that character, however, is that Winnifred isn't celebrated as royalty at first. She begins as a swamp-born outcast, but her "uncomplicated" and "spontaneous" nature, per Foster, wins over her prince and his entire kingdom. (Those qualities and the famous pea-under-20-mattresses test, of course.)

"Audiences respond to her because maybe she inspires them to embrace their own weirdness," Foster said. "I love her because she's exactly who she is [...] she doesn't know she's different. She just is."

Embracing all her unique talents is what's led Foster to her own happily ever after. "One day she was at opening night of her 14th Broadway show," she said of Once Upon a Mattress to conclude her tale, "and still feels like that 10-year-old."

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