“Disenchanted!” star Michelle Knight,
starring in a production of “Music of the Night Masquerade,” hasn’t let breast cancer or motherhood dim her outlook.
It feels like sweet justice that the woman who played Snow White in the homegrown Disney princess spoof “Disenchanted!” is getting her own taste of happily ever after.
“Everything that has happened has led me to this moment,” says a beaming Michelle Knight. And in the past four years, a lot has happened.
In 2014, she tested positive for the breast-cancer gene (BRCA). A double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery followed. Her role in “Disenchanted!” took her to New York City, but in 2015, she was undergoing more surgery to alleviate pain.
The last time I sat down with Knight, in 2016, one of her ovaries had been removed — and she was worried about her prospects for having children.
Today, the Broadway veteran (“Jersey Boys”) and Orlando native is performing in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” show at Walt Disney World’s Epcot, singing in pop group 4eva29 and gearing up to star in the “Music of the Night Masquerade,” a program of musical-theater favorites from Opera del Sol and Orlando Light Opera.
But her new favorite role is mom — she arrives for an interview with her daughter Liana, 15 months old and cute as a button.
“Everything has shifted,” Knight says of motherhood. “Now that she’s here, I’m just so grateful. It feels like she was meant to be here.”
The shift involves more than changing diapers. Married to Nic Kessler, a Disney World show director, Knight’s family now includes stepchildren, dogs — it’s the whole white-picketfence life.
And motherhood brings with it certain lifestyle changes.
“She’s up at 6:30 and ready to go,” says Knight, 38, who like most performers is used to a later schedule. “There’s a part of my soul that feels broken every time I leave the house before 10 a.m.,” she cracks.
Her new status is reflected in the songs of 4eva29 — “It’s what women of a certain age feel about pop music,” she says with a laugh. Among their songs: “Couldn’t Get a Sitter” and “Dad Bod.”
For “Music of the Night Masquerade,” the Orlando native will turn to her musical-theater roots. The concert will include such showstoppers as Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “A Grand Night for Singing,” Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s “Memory” and more.
Among the performers are mezzo soprano Sarah Purser, tenor Kit Cleto and baritone Michael John Foster. Knight is in awe of her co-stars with opera backgrounds.
“The athleticism of the opera world is incredible, the amount of sound they produce is amazing,” says the one-time opera major at the University of Central Florida. (She switched to musical theater after being “distracted by a boy.”)
So with all the sunshine and rainbows in Knight’s life lately, have there been any dark clouds? She thinks back to her wedding at a Mexican resort — where all the gifts were stolen at the reception.
But even grand larceny couldn’t dampen her spirit. “After what I’ve been through,” she says, “it’s all small stuff.”