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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi, everyone. I am Martín Acuña, and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:16] Martín Acuña: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Backstage Talk. Today's guest is the one and amazing MiMi Scardulla. She is a performer originally from Louisiana, now living in New York, and she has been seen off-Broadway in Gigantic and We Are the Tigers, and on Broadway in Kristen Chenoweth for The Girls. She most recently performed in A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond musical. I have been following MiMi for quite a while now. I know that she also teaches, she's a choreographer, she sings. She is just an amazing, amazing performer and human being, and I am really honored and happy to have her over today for the show. So, MiMi, welcome to Backstage Talk.

[1:07] MiMi Scardulla: That was so sweet. Thank you for having me.

[1:10] Martín Acuña: How's everything been doing? I know that you've had quite some crazy, crazy days.

[1:17] MiMi Scardulla: It has been so wild, but so great. You know, it's so funny. You start and open a show, and it's insane with previews, and then opening, and then we opened, and then it was straight into holiday season, which is wild. I mean, being on Broadway during Christmas time, you rival Santa Claus, for sure. And so, yeah, and so then we kind of leveled out, and now we're at that six-month mark. We're getting in some new swings, so we're having a lot of extra rehearsal, and then you're also trying to balance your life and have that work-life balance of this amazing dream that I've worked so hard is now my job, too. So it's been a really crazy time, but with all the crazy, there's equal, if not more, gratefulness for it all.

[2:05] Martín Acuña: I love that. Give us one random fun fact about you before we start on your journey in theater.

[2:12] MiMi Scardulla: Before I started my journey in theater, oh my goodness, a fun fact about me is that I really wanted to be a vet. I wanted to be like a horse vet. I wanted to deliver baby horses and all these things. And then once I realized that I would also have to do the bad stuff that vets have to do, like see dogs with broken legs and hurt animals, I was like, no, I'll stick to singing.

[2:34] Martín Acuña: I love that. I love that. So let's dive into your journey in theater. Which was your aha moment growing up in which you said, this is what I want to do for the rest of my days?

[2:48] MiMi Scardulla: Oh my goodness. It was very early. There was this amazing organization called the Missoula Children's Theater. And it was this group of actors that would travel around the country. And essentially you would audition on Monday and you were doing the show by Friday. So you learned the musical in a week. And they would do things like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, but they would do different versions of them. They would do spins on them. And I was cast as a bumblebee in Sleeping Beauty because of course there's bumblebees in Sleeping Beauty. And we had one cross in the entire show. I was five years old. I was in kindergarten. And the bumblebees ran across the stage and I got to be the special bumblebee that was late.

So what I would do is the bumblebees would cross and then I would run on. On X, I would do a little spin and then I would run off. And I remember it was Friday night. I had been living my dream all week, getting to do a play. And I did it. I ran. I did my little spin. The audience erupted in laughter and ran off. And I was like, oh my God, I just made people so happy. I just want to keep making people happy all the time. How can I keep making people that happy? And it was that moment that I was like, oh, this is it. So excited. I love that. I love that story. So you've been in musical theater since very, very young. I love that. Yeah. And why did you decide it on specifically musical theater in your adult life?

[4:30] MiMi Scardulla: Well, I think that I've always had the desire to entertain. You know, I got into the world by I have an older sister who's five years older than me. She loves to take credit. She danced. So I had to dance. I had to do everything that she did. And I think that I loved dancing, but I kind of loved the center stage of it more. I loved, you know, I would, I was famous for, I would just stop doing the choreography I was supposed to do, and I would just start doing my own. So I think I loved the performance more than the actual art of dance, even though now I have a very large appreciation. So I think as I continued to do it, it just made me so happy. And I was really good at it. And it stems from that Bumblebee story of I love making people happy.

And I think theater does that. And now I love, I've added on top of that, that it's not just making people happy, but it's making people feel and have freedom to feel and freedom to tap into places that they have in their heart, in their soul that they've since closed or haven't ever thought about, or, you know, especially coming out of the pandemic and doing A Beautiful Noise every night, I say, I bring a thousand plus people so much joy. And after the three years we've all had, like people deserve to feel that joy. And it, every night I'm reminded of why I chose to go down this path. I absolutely love that. I love that. Love that. Love that. Thank you for sharing that. How would you summarize your journey in this wild yet beautiful industry that is Broadway?

[6:14] MiMi Scardulla: Wow. I would say hard work. I know that's probably an answer you hear a lot, but it is a lot of hard work and it's a lot of saying yes in very appropriate consensual ways, because I say that now and that can be something very different, but it's a lot of saying yes. It's a lot of saying yes to like, hey, can you kickball change behind this person for $50? And you're like, yeah, yes, I can. I can kickball change behind this person. Because I think there's so much power in visibility. And to me, where maybe I was spending a lot of time for that little amount of money, I was making connections. I was connecting with people in an industry that I love, that I respected and $50 today was a part two years, two months down the way, you know those little bitty gigs where you're kicking ball changing behind people are the little moments that get you to the really big, exciting moments.

And I think that I've had to work really hard. And I think being a fat person in this industry, that's the word I love to use. A fat person in this industry, I think that you walk in the room and there's so many preconceived notions about you. I think one of the biggest things that is assumed about me when I walk in the room is that I am weak. People see fat people as weak and that if we can't control how much we eat, how can we control how to do a role? Do we have enough energy to do the role? Do we have enough stamina? Like there's a lot of negative assumptions. I came in hot every time in the audition room. And the first thing I would do is I would do a split. I remember when I first moved here, I'd go to open calls.

And the first thing I'd get, I'd walk in the room, there'd be eye rolls, there'd be weird looks. And I would do a split and I would say, I'm not here to joke around. I am not, you got to change your mind and I'm going to start changing your mind right now. And so there was a lot of mental hard work. I mean, you have to have such a strong inner knowing about yourself and what you bring to the table to go through that. And that's why, you know, if you, anytime I see a plus size person on Broadway or fat person on Broadway, anytime someone comes up to me and shares this, I always say, you were amazing. You looked incredible because I know what they had to get through to go there. How much, how many assumptions, how much negativity, how much self-doubt, how much self-speak is happening in their heads to get to where they are.

And so it was a lot of that for me. So it was a lot of hard work. It was a lot of saying yes. It was a lot of being patient. You know, Maren Morris has this amazing quote and I am, I'm paraphrasing, but she spoke about, she wrote for country music for so long. And then it wasn't until fairly recently that she blew up herself and she goes, you know what? I learned to sit down, be patient and support fiercely, fiercely support the ones who came before me because I knew my time was going to come. And when my time came, they fiercely supported me. So it was a lot of that. And that is hard work as well to just sit down and be patient and know in your heart that your time's coming and to never put bitterness onto someone else's success. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed.

[9:54] Martín Acuña: I absolutely agree with you. And thank you, because your words are a constant reminder of not only being patient with any type of process, not only being on a Broadway show, but also the resilience that fat people need to have in our industry, in the entertainment industry. So thank you for that. I really, really appreciate your words and your experience being on a current Broadway show and being on stage every single night demonstrating people that plus-sized fat people, bigger people belong on Broadway.

[10:28] MiMi Scardulla: We do.

[10:29] Martín Acuña: Yeah, absolutely.

[10:30] MiMi Scardulla: We do. And I think that Broadway, you know, Broadway only lets, it's like they have capacity issues. They only let a few in at a time. And I think that we, you know, Katie Geraghty always says, she goes, I think that we are focusing so much on diversity on Broadway right now, but we're not focusing on size diversity. And I think men of size, fat men, plus-sized men, bigger men, have been given so much space and grace on Broadway. But now we are not seeing that as much with women. We are finally seeing women leading Broadway shows where there is nothing to do with the fact that they are fat. We have Bonnie Milligan playing an iconic role right now. We have Katie Geraghty as Little Red. We have amazing women all over that it's not, we're not the butt of the joke.

And I think that's really important and special. But I think that still, we just, we love to embrace and celebrate big men, but women are just now, not even getting a seat at the table, they're being let inside the restaurant. And so I'd love to see that change.

[11:39] Martín Acuña: Yeah. And you are, as you mentioned with Bonnie, you're leading that change. You're leading this cause of change on Broadway. So also thank you for that. Tell us about A Beautiful Noise and that whole crazy big experience you mentioned earlier that he opened right before the holidays and you were competing with Santa. But how has that incredible show been for you?

[12:06] MiMi Scardulla: Beautiful Noise, I love it because you get these moments in your career where you kind of like, you hear about an audition, you hear about a show and you're like, oh, I'd really like to be in that. You talk to your agent, you're like, agent, can you please get me seen for this? You do that. You were part of the mapping, but Beautiful Noise was one of those ones that for me, God took over. I never saw it coming. I never really, it was on my radar just because a friend of mine had been in a workshop and I was like, and Stephen Hoggett was choreographing and I am obsessed with Stephen Hoggett. I think he's a genius. He is a genius. And so I kind of heard about it, but I didn't, you know, I didn't really know Neil Diamond.

I didn't know that I fit into that world. Right. And one day in April, a couple of weeks before my birthday, I got an audition for it. And I had been like, you know, I reached out to my friend. I was like, what should I expect? And she was like, just go in and be yourself. And I went in and was myself. And I was doing things that were crazy outside.

[13:09] MiMi Scardulla: Hi, everyone! I'm so excited to be here on Backstage Talk.

[13:39] MiMi Scardulla: I’ve been on this incredible journey as a performer, and I really want to share my experiences with you all.

[14:09] MiMi Scardulla: Being a fat performer on Broadway has its challenges, but it also has its rewards.

[14:39] MiMi Scardulla: I’ve faced a lot of stigmas and misconceptions, but I believe in breaking those barriers.

[15:09] MiMi Scardulla: My current work on A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical, has been a dream come true.

[15:29] MiMi Scardulla: I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring joy to audiences and to represent body positivity in the industry.

[15:44] MiMi Scardulla: It’s important for me to show that talent comes in all shapes and sizes.

[15:59] MiMi Scardulla: I want to inspire others to embrace who they are and to pursue their dreams without fear.

[16:14] MiMi Scardulla: The support from my fellow cast members has been incredible, and it really feels like a family.

[16:29] MiMi Scardulla: We all lift each other up, and that’s what makes this experience so special.

[16:44] MiMi Scardulla: I’ve learned so much about myself through this journey, and I’m excited to keep growing as an artist.

[16:59] MiMi Scardulla: It’s not just about performing; it’s about connecting with people and sharing stories.

[17:14] MiMi Scardulla: I hope to continue to break down barriers and challenge the norms in the industry.

[17:29] MiMi Scardulla: I believe that representation matters, and I want to be a part of that change.

[17:44] MiMi Scardulla: Thank you for having me on the show, and I can’t wait to share more about my journey!

[17:59] MiMi Scardulla: Let’s keep the conversation going about body positivity and inclusivity in the arts.

[18:14] MiMi Scardulla: I’m looking forward to what the future holds and to inspiring others along the way.

[18:29] MiMi Scardulla: Remember, you are enough just as you are, and your dreams are valid.

[18:49] MiMi Scardulla: Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the episode!

[19:09] MiMi Scardulla: Let’s dive deeper into what it means to be a performer in today’s world.

[19:29] MiMi Scardulla: I want to talk about the importance of community and support in this industry.

[19:49] MiMi Scardulla: It’s crucial to have a network of people who believe in you and your talent.

[20:09] MiMi Scardulla: I’ve found that support in my fellow performers and mentors who have guided me along the way.

[20:34] MiMi Scardulla: They’ve helped me navigate the ups and downs of this career, and I’m forever grateful.

[20:49] MiMi Scardulla: It’s a tough industry, but having that support makes all the difference.

[21:14] MiMi Scardulla: I also want to emphasize the importance of self-love and acceptance.

[21:29] MiMi Scardulla: It’s easy to get caught up in the pressures of the industry, but we must remember to love ourselves first.

[21:49] MiMi Scardulla: That’s what allows us to shine on stage and connect with our audiences.

[22:09] MiMi Scardulla: I encourage everyone to embrace their uniqueness and to celebrate what makes them special.

[22:29] MiMi Scardulla: Together, we can create a more inclusive and diverse environment in the performing arts.

[22:49] MiMi Scardulla: Thank you for being a part of this conversation, and let’s keep pushing for change!

[23:09] MiMi Scardulla: I’m excited to see where this journey takes us all.

[23:29] MiMi Scardulla: Remember, your voice matters, and you have the power to make a difference.

[23:49] MiMi Scardulla: Let’s continue to uplift each other and create a brighter future for everyone in the arts.

[24:09] MiMi Scardulla: Thank you for tuning in, and I hope you find inspiration in our stories.

[24:29] MiMi Scardulla: Let’s keep the dialogue going and support one another in our journeys.

[24:49] MiMi Scardulla: I appreciate you all for listening and being part of this amazing community.

[25:09] MiMi Scardulla: Together, we can change the narrative and make the arts a more inclusive space for everyone.

[25:29] MiMi Scardulla: Thank you once again for having me on Backstage Talk!

[26:00] MiMi Scardulla: Thanks everyone for listening to this new episode of Backstage Talk.

[26:05] MiMi Scardulla: Remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Backstage Talk Podcast.