Jennifer Simard is nominated for a Tony this season, as Best Actress in a Musical. So is her Death Becomes Her co-star, Megan Hilty. Playing frenemies whose fur-flying ferocity lasts more than a lifetime or two, theirs is, almost, a dueling performance. One character couldn’t exist without returning the serve of the other, which they do with such mastery that it’s been suggested that both of them should win the Tony, a scenario that Simard tells Observer would be a “dream come true.” After all, she adds, “we are functioning as partners with this show.”
The click-click-click of their chemistry was there from the beginning, she beams. “The first reading we did together was in April of 2023,” Simard says. “Then we did a workshop for about three weeks in August of 2023, and finally Chicago in the spring of 2024. In each incarnation, like any kind of relationship, it continued to grow and deepen. We wallowed and dealt with each other in kindness and respect. We took care of each another. We know, inherently, how important it is to protect our relationship, on stage and off. The off-stage relationship is palpable on stage.”
That’s perhaps a loaded statement, given the vicious hilarity of that onstage relationship. Hilty plays Madeline Ashton, a brassy, blonde theater star, and Simard plays struggling writer Helen Sharp. They’ve been rivals since childhood, and Madeline—feeling some career-slippage—invites Helen to view what’s left of her showbiz sparkle, stealing Helen’s straight-laced fiancé—plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Christopher Sieber)—in the process. When they cross paths again, Helen’s Godzilla side comes out, and bombastic bitchiness rules the show. Oh, and there’s a magic potion that will provide eternal beauty, so when things turn murderous the two come back to life.
A twin Tony win for these two would be, as Simarard says, a dream come true, but it is just a dream—this prize doesn’t split, and the competition—including Audra McDonald in Gypsy and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard—is fierce. Or, as Simard diplomatically puts it, “So many women could have been correctly nominated this year.”
A recurring Tony nominee, Simard is facing the fate of the super-gifted also-ran. Disappointment One: Disaster!, the 2016 jukebox musical in which she was Sister Mary Downey, a nun on a floating casino slap-happy over slot machines; Hamilton’s Renee Elise Goldsberry picked up that prize. Her next nomination, in 2022, was for playing Sarah in the gender-flipped Company. “I call that my pandemic show,” she says, “We did about 12 shows before everything shut down, but we came back and reopened. I was a cover for Patti LuPone, so, when she got COVID—as we all did in March of ’22—I did about ten days for her. She was my Tony competition, and, of course, she won—rightly. That’s how it’s been.”
But never mind. Nightly, on stage, both she and Hilty are winners—dual victory being part of the secret of this partnership. Simard follows some advice given her by Faith Prince, a co-star from Disaster currently in Boop! The Musical. “I knew this, but she affirmed it,” Simard says. “One of the worst things you can do on stage as a comedienne is die for laughs. You must throw the ball to your playing partner and let them win sometime. If they win, you win.”
What keeps Hilty and Simard’s comic engines charging away on all cylinders is that the audiences appreciate what they are doing up there. “Oh, yeah, you can feel it,” Simard insists. “The audience really is with us from the get-go. It just grows as the show goes. They’re not ahead of the jokes, but they’re right there because they know who we are as characters.”
If Simard had a bucket list of roles she would like to do, it would come from this bucket. “I don’t have an aversion to revivals, but I love originating new roles. I didn’t see this role coming at all. Originality is my dream. I really want to create something from the incubation.”
And next? “I do this next,” she says, confident and content. “After the Tony Awards on June 8, it’ll be nice to do this gig for a while. It’s a wonderful show. I’m in no hurry to spread my wings.”