Sierra Boggess is once again reinventing the ingenue.
As Mercedes in the new Off-Broadway show, Monte Cristo, the Olivier-nominated soprano is stepping into the kind of sweeping, high-romance musical storytelling that made so many theater fans fall in love with the art form in the first place. With music by Stephen Weiner and lyrics by Peter Kellogg, the production brings Alexandre Dumas’ epic tale of love, betrayal, justice, and revenge to life in an intimate York Theatre staging that still manages to feel grand, cinematic, and emotionally immense.
When I caught up with Boggess, we talked about what drew her to the show, why the score feels like “coming home,” and how Mercedes becomes far more than a “lost love” in this telling. She also opened up about caring for herself in emotionally dense material, the surprising modern resonance of a story set in 1815, her passionate thoughts on the Winter Olympics as a figure skater herself, and more.
ALEX: When this project first came your way, what was your immediate reaction? Were you already a Count of Monte Cristo fan, or did this adaptation pull you in?
SIERRA: I first met the writing team, Stephen (Weiner) and Peter (Kellogg), almost 20 years ago, working on a show they were writing called The Rivals. And I fell in love with how they wrote then: their sensibility, their humor, and the way Stephen writes music. It’s the kind of music that made me want to do this for a living in the first place.
Then, probably 10 years later, they asked if I would come do a workshop or reading of The Count of Monte Cristo. That was my introduction to this. And I didn’t know the story! For some reason, I missed it. Everyone else seems to have known about The Count of Monte Cristo. I did not.
Then I was like, “Oh my God, I understand why everyone loves this piece of literature.” Digging into it, it’s no wonder there have been so many movies and TV shows and all kinds of adaptations of this incredible story. So that’s what drew me in: the story and the music. Because this music is wow. We haven’t had a new musical like this in a really long time.
What is it specifically about this music? What does it feel like to sing it?
It feels like coming home! I don’t want to compare it to Les Mis and Phantom, but…
I did the Les Mis tour with Adam Jacobs, who plays the Count, it was one of my first jobs out of school. And I did Phantom with Norm Lewis. You walk out of those shows knowing and singing these high romantic, gorgeous scores because they’re really easy to listen to and they’re so beautiful. That is what this is like. And because it’s such high romance, you have to have sweeping music like this. Sometimes we get excited about the idea of a show, and then we go see it and it’s maybe like, “Well, musically, that wasn’t what I would think this story would have.” This is hand in glove.
The show deals with big themes like justice, revenge, power, and love. What feels the most resonant to you right now? And is there a key takeaway you hope audiences walk away with?
It’s all those words you just said. Hey, does that sound like anything we’re waking up and living with each day?
How can this show, this story about France in 1815, be so relevant today? You’ll hear it in the opening number the ensemble sings. It’s called “These Are Dangerous Times.” And Peter didn’t write these lyrics this year, he wrote them around 10 years ago. I want people to come to the theater and be like, “This is very relevant to today.” There’s also a feeling of “We got your back.” We know these are hard times. Just come in for the high romance of it and remember we can get through these hard times together.
One of the key takeaways for me is the amount of hope that’s in this piece — and that’s also in our time today. Because if not, we’d feel nihilistic. We’d feel like, what’s the point? But this is the point. High art is the point. High drama is the point. And hope is the point.
The show takes place over 20 years, and you watch each of us in great joy, young and in love, and then what becomes of you when things are taken from you. How are you going to survive? And what each character clings to for survival: some greed, some power, some revenge, some love. Some turn fully to despair. Some turn to drink. It’s not like a museum piece that you can’t relate to.
Mercedes is often seen as the “lost love,” but in this adaptation she feels much more layered. How do you see her?
Oh, she’s layered. She’s a big old, big old cake. She has layers upon layers upon layers. And if you try and simplify her, you are greatly mistaken.
When you first meet her, and it’s fun for me to revisit that ingenue — but it’s the same as how I looked at Christine, too. And as I would get older in the different times that I would revisit Christine, the older you get, the wiser you are, right? So it’s like, she is not just what we might boil her down to.
Every time you see her on stage, she’s fighting for something that she knows to be true in her heart. You’re watching her fight for the truth and being gaslit at the same time, which people can relate to. She’s saying, “I’m almost certain that this is the truth.” Then you have certain people in the show — and I’m trying so hard not to give anything away — that are like, “no, no, this is the truth, and your truth is not real.”
You watch her fighting for the truth so much. Then it’s wrapped up in the greatest love of her life, and how she goes on when she feels like that is lost, and then how she’s going to put that energy towards something else to survive, right? So yeah, it’s really layered.
One of her final moments of the show is possibly one of the most complex songs in terms of … we haven’t had a gorgeous new love duet in a long time. When Norm heard it for the first time, he was sitting off on the side in the rehearsal room, and he was like, “I don’t want people to see me crying.” It’s really emotional.
Speaking of Norm, you two have worked together several times now. What is it about your chemistry and connection that makes you want to keep exploring new projects together?
We call Norm the Mayor of Broadway because he’s everyone’s best friend. Everyone knows him or feels like they know him. He’s just one of the greatest humans to be around. He makes every work environment very enjoyable. And this is a small spoiler, but we actually aren’t even on stage together. He plays a character that I never interact with. But even so, I just love having his presence around. For all these years, I call him “Daddy.” I’m sure a lot of people call him Daddy. But I’m always like, “Daddy, can you…?” So we truly are like family. And my god, listening to him sing! You can have known someone for so long, and you’ve heard him a million times, you’ve sung concerts together, done so many gigs, and it never gets old listening to Norm Lewis sing.
The last time we spoke, you were starring in an adaptation of another classic novel, The Age of Innocence. How does this production explore your character in ways beyond what’s known from the source material?
I have to shout out my director, Peter Flynn. This is our first time working together, and I can’t wait to work with him again and again and again. He has created a work environment that is so collaborative. He’s been really amazing about letting me come in with ideas. I’m always like, “Do you want my 3 a.m. thoughts now or later?” That doesn’t always happen. You don’t always get that openness. But also, it’s his vision and I trust him. It’s been really fabulous.
All of that is to say I come in with ideas of another way to express what this woman is feeling in this time, keeping in mind the time period. She’s similar to Ellen in The Age of Innocence in the sense that she’s trying to do the right thing, but there’s something pulling her toward this other thing. It’s tricky but that’s what makes us love this type of high art. These characters are what we go through every day in our lives.
I honestly thought I was done with this part of my career, playing these types of women. I’ve been enjoying my comedy era, my villain era. But then when I came into this on day one, I was like, “Oh no. I still have so much to say for these women who are going through all this.” This has been my bread and butter for so many years. And I’m really loving portraying this complex love story.
It really is such a sweeping and epic love story, but it’s being done in The York’s more intimate staging. What do you think that intimacy adds to something this grand?
We were just talking about this the other day, Norm, Adam and I. We’re like the dinner club, we always go on our dinner breaks together. We were saying how cool it is, because this piece could sustain even in a huge theater like the Majestic. But there’s something so special about doing an epic piece in a smaller-scale situation, because the audience gets to really see our faces. You’re getting the sweeping epicness, but you’re also getting the intimacy of these stories. It’s epic because the stories are so intimate and so tricky.
Off-Broadway means our budget is smaller than Broadway, so it also makes people be so creative costume-wise and set-wise. This set is so cool. It’ll feel epic when you walk in, it looks like you’re in a dungeon, and then all of a sudden, with projections, you’re in this opulent party, or someone’s house. It has epicness around it, but you also get to trust that what you’re doing as an actor is coming across. You don’t have to fight so hard for it to be seen.
When you’re approaching something this emotionally dense, how do you take care of yourself, especially in a piece that deals with betrayal and loss?
I learned this when I was getting ready to do Love Never Dies — that was 2010, I think. I talked with an acting teacher, because I couldn’t separate myself from the character. It was creeping into my personal life. I really couldn’t separate myself. She said, “Make a list of ways that you are not her.” Anything down to: she’s Parisian and you’re American. So you have that to fall back on. That helped me.
She also gave me this analogy: you’ve got to wipe your feet at the doormat before you go into your house. Do the character, do the whole thing, feel the feelings, cry, but then you wipe your feet and you go back into real life.
That analogy has been helpful for me, and even in this rehearsal process I’ve used that. I feel very responsible to tell this story and feel it and go through this journey — and I really do — but it’s also my responsibility to walk out as Sierra.
I’ve heard of TV actors doing really intense characters who don’t even go home until the project is totally done, just so their home life isn’t a wreck. It’s intense what we go through.
The show’s run ends on April 5. What do you have coming up after this production that your fans can look forward to?
I have a concert right away, a couple weeks later, in Palm Springs. And then I’m going to London to do one night only at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. That’s happening May 31.
Then there are things in the works that I can’t wait to share with fans, but until I can say those things, those are my two concerts! People can come if they want to hear some more singing and go down memory lane with me on other shows I’ve done.
If you could sit down with Alexandre Dumas and ask him one question about either Mercedes or just the story in general, what would that be?
What a question! I would want to know what inspired the book, to be honest. What was his personal life like? What made him know how to write these intensely complex characters? I know how to play different characters because of so many crazy things that have happened in my personal life. So that would be my question: what was going on in your life?
As a former competitive figure skater, did you watch the Winter Olympics? What were some of your highlights?
I watched and watched! What an intense journey. Also, if anyone watched figure skating at the Winter Olympics, the emotional journey you go on with those athletes is basically what you’re going to go through watching Monte Cristo. I think I went through all my feelings. I felt sick to my stomach, as if it happened to me when Ilia went through.
My biggest takeaway is how much respect I have for these young athletes and the headspace they need to be in. They’re doing this in a world where everything is public. It’s all on social media. They’re being asked, “Why’d you mess up?” as soon as they walk off the ice after one of the most heartbreaking things happens, and then they have to comment on it and deal with people’s opinions.
I feel insane amounts of empathy for them and I’m so proud of them. I’m so proud of Alysa Liu. I’m so grateful that kids are looking to her and saying, “I want to be that joyful.” But I also want to remind people that she got that joyful because she was like, “Hold on. I don’t want to go on this journey that’s taking me to a place that isn’t going to feel good.”
Amber Glenn is one of my favorites to watch. Her journey, and how she fought back, it was unbelievable. And Maxim Naumov, whose parents died in the plane crash, and then he became an Olympian… it’s like, oh my God. It just doesn’t get better than that. I want to know them all. I want to talk to them all. I want to interview them all. I want to hug them all. I want to hang out. They’re just an incredible crop of athletes, and what a great representation for the figure skating community to be seen.
It was so inspiring!
So inspiring. And people don’t understand how difficult it is. I have no empathy for people that just write shit online to them. People who have something to say, especially if you’ve never tried it… I challenge you to go get a pair of ice skates and go try it out, then see if you have something to say.
I’m part of the adult figure skating community and I have a new program that I’m working on with my coach. It’s two minutes and ten seconds, and my heart rate this morning went to 182 at some point. And I’m not even doing triples! What they have mastered — to make it look easy and not look like they’re tired — it’s something else.
It’s kind of like singing, right? It takes so much effort to make it look effortless.
Absolutely. Our job is to make it look easy and effortless. I think now, especially with social media, you only see the best or the worst. You don’t see the work in between. You see people’s best and you see when they’re at their worst.
I think that’s why there’s a huge rise in anxiety and all this stuff, because people are watching and thinking, “I’m supposed to be perfect,” which doesn’t exist. Or: “What if I’m mocked?” So yeah, I don’t have time for people hiding behind screens and commenting on people.
Finally, when you think about the central question at the heart of Monte Cristo, what kind of future is worth fighting for, how would you answer that?
I have an amazing therapist who always has me pick a word of the year instead of a resolution. And I did a year of integrity, and that really changed my life. When you know better, you’ve got to do better. The life worth living is a life of integrity. And integrity is different for everyone. But I really do believe Mercedes goes through her life with a guiding light of as much integrity as she possibly can.
I know when things have been really hard, you want to veer. You want to be like, “Well, everyone else is cutting corners — why shouldn’t I?” I tried that, and it never feels good. Yes, you can cut corners. Yes, you can be a dick and get by and get awards and all kinds of things, but it’s never going to feel good. So I think a life choosing integrity would be the one.
I love that. Is there anything that you wanted to add that we didn’t talk about?
I just want to say a shout-out again to this creative team, this director, and this cast. It’s not just Norm and Sierra and Adam, who you might know, and Karen Ziemba. My God, Karen Ziemba is in this show. I’ve never gotten to work with her, we’ve done a couple concerts, but let’s just say she is Karen Ziemba for a reason. She’s incredible. Every single person, and I’m not just saying that, it really is a cast of incredible actors, and we’re doing big feats to make this thing happen. I’m truly happy that I’m doing this show, and I can’t wait for everyone to come and see it.
CLICK HERE to get tickets to Monte Cristo, now playing through April 5 at the Theatre at St. Jean’s, 150 East 76th Street, in New York City.