I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

I am a feminist with a capital 'F' .

I do think that there is an almost more old fashioned mentality to the way musical theatre people and actresses especially are treated.

My biggest influence is someone I really don't know at all: Tina Fey. Smart, funny, beautiful, self-deprecating, also a mom and a wife.

In LA you can't tell the teenagers and the moms apart, which is so strange to me. And then it's like, "Who is leading who?" Are the moms emulating the daughters? In which case we're going backwards - that's not how it goes - the mothers teach the daughters how to be. It's a very strange thing to me.

There's an infantilization that happens to actresses in general - musical theatre, straight theatre, television, film - we're spoken to like children. Actors are spoken to like children a lot of the time.

I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness - there's nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you've ever had.