‘Something Rotten!’ star shines as working mom
Arizona-raised actress Autumn Hurlbert got her big break competing on an MTV reality show, and now she’s starring in the national tour of Broadway’s “Something Rotten!” But her most challenging role so far is that of working mom.
That means a lot of multitasking, including fielding a phone interview during a trip to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle with her 2-year-old son, Lincoln.
“No pushing!” she admonishes him. “You like the rainbow fish. We’re going to share. Can you share with him?”
Hurlbert says the only reason she can manage is that her husband, a psychologist, was able to downscale his practice and join her on the road, while still working with a handful of clients via FaceTime.
“We lovingly call him our stay in hotel daddy,” she says. “We’re having this great adventure together on the road.”
Born in Great Falls, Mont., Hurlbert came to Arizona with her family as a first-grader and cut her performance teeth at local companies including Scottsdale’s Greasepaint Youtheatre. She majored in musical theater at the University of Northern Colorado and then moved to New York to purse a Broadway career.
In 2008, she was runner-up on MTV’s “Legally Blonde: The Musical — The Search for Elle Woods,” which landed her a role in the ensemble of the Broadway show.
“That experience was wild,” she says. “It showed me another side of the business that I was blissfully unaware of, so it honed my ability to make my love of performing an actual business. I learned how to split my energy between making a living while maintaining my creative integrity.”
In “Something Rotten!” she plays the ingénue role of Portia, a prim Puritan in 16th-century England who falls in love with Nigel Bottom, one of two brothers who decide to knock William Shakespeare off the top of the theater world by inventing history’s first musical.
Spoofing all things Bard and Broadway, the show was a hit in 2015, garnering nine Tony nominations and one win, for featured actor Christian Borle.
“My favorite song comes in the second act,” Hurlbert says. “It’s called ‘We See the Light,’ and it’s kind of a dream sequence, and it takes an unexpected turn and I love audiences’ reaction to it.”
The national tour will bring her back to the place where her love of musical theater began, Tempe’s ASU Gammage, for a weeklong run starting Tuesday, Oct. 31.
She was 7 when she saw her first show Where: ASU Gammage, Mill Avenue and Apache Boulevard, Tempe.
Admission: $30 and up.
Details: 480-965-3434, asugammage.com. there, the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic “Oklahoma!” She had been preparing by listening to a cast recording, and when the leading man walked onstage singing, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” she stood up and shouted, “Oh, what a beautiful day!”
“So obviously I wanted to participate from the first moment I stepped into Gammage,” she says.