Cristin Milioti’s space. (Zandy Mangold)
Looms Milioti’s boyfriend made into a piece of art. (Zandy Mangold)
Storing bikes vertically is just one way she’s used her vertical space. (Zandy Mangold)
‘It’s not very pretty here, but I do love all the space,” actress Cristin Milioti says of the open loft in Bushwick that she moved into in February of last year.
Milioti, who stars as an aspiring singer in the musical “Once” (opening Sunday at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre), previously lived on the Upper West Side. And she still has warm feelings about that neighborhood. “It’s so beautiful up there,” Milioti, 26, gushes of her former home near Riverside Park, adding, “but I was living in a shoe box.”
While she’s still basically living in one room, the size of her space — which she shares with her furniture-maker boyfriend, Jesse Hooker, 32 — has more than tripled. Her Upper West Side studio was just 200 square feet, and she estimates that her Brooklyn loft rental is about 700 square feet. “This was an old textile mill, so it had to fit heavy machinery,” Milioti says of the space, which boasts soaring, 15-foot ceilings that are nearly three times the height of the petite actress. “I can’t reach a lot of things, so I wanted Jesse to make me a really nice stool.”
The apartment is home to a number of Hooker’s pieces (he has a handcrafted, reclaimed furniture business, Hooker & Co., in the neighborhood). Of these, the centerpiece is a 9-foot dining table (that can seat 12) positioned in front of a striking wall of windows. Milioti and Hooker have hosted many dinner parties, including a Thanksgiving gathering for the cast of “Once,” along with the couple’s family and friends.
“We cooked a 20-pound, free-range turkey,” Milioti says. “Jesse is a really good cook, and I’ve gotten much better.”
It took some work for them to be able to cook at all in the apartment: Milioti and Hooker had to create a kitchen from scratch. With only the plumbing for a sink provided, Hooker built a counter, and the couple hit up Best Buy for appliances.
Then a stainless-steel cooking island was given to them by a friend who came across it on a job taking apart a commercial kitchen. It adds to the apartment’s reclaimed feel and sits just below a sculpture Hooker made with antique looms. The piece acts as a divider between the kitchen and living area.
While Milioti would have preferred a home with more amenities, Hooker was thrilled by the open canvas. “Think of the possibilities. We could do anything we want,” he told her.
Like putting in a three-tiered bicycle rack, which acts as a piece of functional art. “The bottom one’s been mine since I was 10, and the other two are his,” Milioti says of the bicycles. “My boyfriend’s an avid biker. He’s biked across the country and in Iceland.”
Milioti’s career has been on a steady ascent since landing a recurring role on “The Sopranos” as Johnny Sacramoni’s daughter when she was 19. She’s gone on to guest-star on “30 Rock” and is starring in Mike Birbiglia’s upcoming film, “Sleepwalk With Me,” which premiered at Sundance this year and was picked up by IFC.
Luckily for Milioti, the festival fell in a lull between the off-Broadway and Broadway runs of “Once,” allowing the New Jersey native to attend. Now, though, she’s had to adjust to singing eight shows a week.
She shares much in common with her character, simply called Girl, in “Once” — her first musical. For one, Milioti writes songs but is shy about sharing them. “It’s a very private thing, but I’m getting better at just letting go,” she says. “I shared one recently. We did an open-mike night as a cast, and I shared it. That was huge.”
And like her character, Milioti plays piano. During our visit, she sits down at her upright piano and starts playing “Someone Like You.”
“I’m obsessed with Adele right now, like every other person on the planet,” Milioti says as she rattles off a list of other favorite musicians, including Mumford & Sons and Radiohead. “I don’t listen to show tunes ever.”
Which seems fitting. “Once” isn’t filled with standard show tunes. It features the songs of indie musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová — who received an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly,” from the soundtrack of their film “Once.”
But Milioti didn’t prepare for the stage role by seeing the movie or listening to the soundtrack. Instead, she learned the songs by playing them on the piano. “The only one I listened to was ‘When Your Mind’s Made Up,’ ” she says. “I had to listen to it over and over again while I played to get the thing.”
In the show, Milioti and her castmates are the band. “We all play everything. I play piano, Steve (Kazee) plays guitar,” she explains. “There’s a violin, cello, mandolin, banjo, drums, and everyone just does it while moving around.”
And she has one more thing in common with her “Once” character. Like the area where the struggling creative types live in the musical, Bushwick is a hotbed for young artists. And it’s growing on Milioti — especially the budding restaurant scene.“We’re down the street from Roberta’s, which is my favorite when we can get in,” she says. “There’s also this place, Northeast Kingdom, which is one stop past us. It’s one of the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever had.”
Cristin Milioti’s
FAVORITE THINGS
* The piano
* The 9-foot, reclaimed-wood dining-room table designed and built by her boyfriend
* Her grandmother’s Delft vase, brought over from Belgium after World War II
* The looms her boyfriend made into a piece of art (left)
* A green cabinet she and her mom found on the side of the road when Milioti was a girl
* A large map of NYC’s five boroughs, circa 1982
* The picture wall — photos of loved ones as well as sketches and prints: “The last thing I get to see when I leave, and the first thing I get to see when I come home again,” she says.