I've grown up watching and admiring Norm. Sherie actually starred in the first off-Broadway show I ever saw in New York, which was The Last Five Years. It's amazing how things come full-circle and how the community (once you hang around it long enough) grows smaller and smaller as it grows. Sharing the stage with these people is more than a dream come true it's so special. They're so warm and giving and offer the best advice. Sherie is very nice and maternal and nurturing.

I pinch myself every night when I hear the overture starting. I'm so overwhelmed by the whole process, and humbled and giddy all at the same time because I can't believe it's me that gets to sing these songs every night.

Meanwhile someone is shining my head to get it dry to attach my top-hat to my head with toupee tape. I get into microphone and get back up into my dressing room for the rest of my costume. I get snapped into all these things and layers and bundled up. I walk downstairs to the pit. Someone hands me my baton (which lights up like a wand) and I watch the first three minutes of the show. Then I come up out of the pit and there I am.

I'm praying for healing for our nation. For retaliation that yields constructive results. Peaceful protests. We need each other.

As soon as that little "ba-da-da-dink-dink" at the beginning of "Under the Sea" starts I think to myself: "Here we go! Let's do it!" When I first got the role, I was very intimidated because people have high expectations. But I have nothing to prove only to share. I'll do my best interpretation of what these songs should sound like in their current incarnations and it's quite an honor.

I've been in New York for going on five years now, and I always thought I would make a mark and do something but I never thought it would be this big of a deal. I'm so blessed and I'm truly honored.

If anyone has the opportunity to work with that woman, jump at it. She is the most generous, most giving director I have ever worked with in my entire life. She is classy. She speaks a dozen difference languages.