Keala settles into life after The Greatest Showman: ‘I ran from fear – I drank, took pills, all of that’ | platform

forShining in the fluorescent glow of her rehearsal studio on the south bank of the Thames, Keala Settle embodies a woman redefining herself in the court of public opinion. Playing former First Lady Mary Lincoln in Mrs. President, a bleak and unsettling stage production that begins a six-week run at London’s Charing Cross Theater this month, she grapples with the turbulent inner world of Abraham Lincoln’s wife, distorted by the media and eager to rewrite herself in the eyes of the United States after her husband’s assassination and the Civil War.

As an actress and a woman, Settle — known internationally for her performance in The Greatest Showman as the bearded lady Letty Lotz — is also content with being who people tell her to be. She explains that it took 10 years to get to this point. But her encounters with celebrities and grief served as the perfect setting for this psychodrama. “This role – I just jumped into it. I’ve never been so closely associated with anything.”

The 75-minute play finds Lincoln on a painful journey of self-discovery in the studio of Matthew Brady (Hal Fowler), the founder of photojournalism and celebrity photography. Their meeting – resulting in a landmark portrait – is imagined by writer John Ransom Phillips and Olivier-nominated director Bronagh Lagan.

It’s very different from Oh Mary!, the Tony Award-winning dark comedy that depicts the same First Lady as a drunken cabaret star in the run-up to her husband’s death, but arrives in the West End, by a strange coincidence, at the same time. However, in Mrs. Boss, Settle, 50, hopes audiences will see “Mary and I in a whole new light.” In her case, she hopes they understand: “I’m definitely going to be who I’m going to be, and it’s not going to fit anyone’s mold.”

The message bears more than a passing resemblance to the one at the heart of The Greatest Showman and Settle This Is Me’s solo offering, which catapulted it into the cultural canon, winning Best Original Song at the Golden Globes and earning an Oscar nomination in 2018.

This role and that of Mary Lincoln reflect Settle’s own journey toward self-acceptance. Her father, David, who was born in Oldham, was on a Mormon mission to New Zealand when he met her mother, Susan; The two had Settle, the first of five children, in Hawaii, and he later moved to French-speaking Louisiana. As a result, Settle felt like she existed in “two different worlds.”

“I would come home and it would be like this: we would learn the alphabet, Māori music and the game of teti turiya stick; then we would go out and have to find another identity because that identity was not for outside.”

Settle always wanted to act but also “sang anything and everything” and was constantly seeking the affection of her artist mother who pushed her down the same path. “I was supposed to be a singer, and I had a sister who was supposed to be a doctor, and a brother who was supposed to be a lawyer… I think that was the plight of the culture my mother grew up in, and maybe not far from the teachings of the church that she believed in.”

The compromiser’s instinct was to fight against it. This “liberation from motherhood” was another thing that attracted her to the role of Mary Lincoln, who was six when her mother died. Settle’s mother died a decade ago. “There were similarities for me because my mother was very stubborn,” she recalls. “It was really embarrassing for me to have someone I trusted, or was supposed to trust, at least, push me in front of people non-stop.”

She was shaped by her many cultural influences and this will to evade the identity imposed by her mother. “That’s literally who I am. On top of that, there were these two people who came from completely different sides of the world.” In Louisiana, she remembers how people viewed her parents: “Because my mother was a different color than my father, that played a big role in what we all saw and liked.”

Settle’s parents didn’t want their children to look like them, yet I watched Fawlty Towers and Have You Been Served? on cable and “always had a British accent.” It is strongly British today (the settlers live in Brighton), and carries hints of Pacific heritage. “Everyone in our communities, wherever we were, referred to my father as Mr. Bean.”

Settle’s career has taken her around the world, performing in some of the most popular musicals of the past decade. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her 2013 Broadway debut as Norma Valverde in Hands on a Hardbody; In 2015, she played the original role of Becky in Waitress – Her mother died on the show’s opening night in Massachusetts. Other credits include Les Misérables and Hairspray and she sang backup for Gladys Knight in Las Vegas. Settle made her West End debut in &Juliet, then Sister Act, and most recently appeared as Miss Coddle, the headmistress of Shiz University, in the film adaptation of Wicked.

2017’s The Greatest Showman was a turning point. “Working on a Showman production was a dream come true. I’ve never had a dream come true before.” She calls it a “gift.” However, I struggled with the consequences. “Having never been involved in am-drama or regional theatre, I was very lucky to jump,” she says [to such a big role] But what my soul longed for was a connection between all the things everyone had been through.

The result was that “when I did Showman I wasn’t ready.” An emotionally charged rehearsal for the song “This Is Me.”, Four months after her mother’s death, the video went viral, but Settle “I couldn’t watch it for maybe more than five seconds. I saw myself as a five-year-old girl who wasn’t taken care of yet because four months before her mother died. Her whole world that told her what to do, where to go, why she got into this industry was gone to piss that woman off. So what does she do now?”

The film grossed $435 million at the worldwide box office and brought Settle global fame, but she never wanted fame, as “other people hold the cards, so you’re what they tell you to be.” Pressure against this can be portrayed “as an obsession, and the people most vulnerable to this misconception are women,” she says. I find parallels again in the public scrutiny Lincoln faced.

After the hectic release of The Greatest Showman, things got even tougher. Settle suffered a mini-stroke and underwent a 10-hour double brain procedure just a week before the Oscars, where she was to perform in a dress prepared from her hospital bed. She was diagnosed with moyamoya disease, a rare cerebrovascular disorder. “This was a disease that I had no idea I had, and it just happened to be fueled by what was happening.”

Settle’s diagnosis underscored the feeling that she was pushing herself too far. “I used to say, ‘Give, give, give, and when you die, keep giving.’ Then I said, ‘Okay, I’ve got to take care of myself.’” In the eight years that followed, the work she did to process everything she had experienced left Settle with an appetite for projects that instilled a healthy amount of fear. I ask her now if fear is a thing… “You’re welcome,” she answers before I have a chance to finish the question.

But didn’t you always welcome him? “Oh God no. I ran away from him. I ran, I drank, I took pills, all of it.” “I’m looking for projects that make my ass tingle internally but I know I need them,” she says today.

Creatively, the rare switch from musicals to drama was something she longed for. “Without music, you would have to work 10 million times harder to find the tools to have that kind of effect, because music has its own healing powers,” she says.

Did she have to go through Showman and everything that happened before and after to get to this play? “Yes,” she gasped, her eyes tearing up. “There’s no way I could have done this if I hadn’t gone through all of that. I wouldn’t have understood it. It’s terrifying but it’s also empowering that I can understand every part of this story and still have grace not only for that woman but also for myself, that anyone who comes to see her can step back and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t this — it’s this“.”

Which brings us back to the seismic impact of This Is Me. “As much as I sang this song as a character, the way I lead for me Life is something a lot of people can’t handle because it’s not their version of me.” She says this is exactly what Mary Lincoln was going through: “We see you as the sad mother, you’re the crazy one, you’re this and you’re that.”

“She takes it all back by saying, ‘You’re right,'” Settle says of herself and Lincoln. I hope you enjoy the show because I survived it.”

The Boss Lady is at Charing Cross Theatre, London, until 8 March.