‘Ethereal. Enthusiastic. Extraordinary!” And that’s just the E’s!
Tony-winning costume designer William Ivey Long has dressed a lot of stars in his time, but he’s running short on superlatives for his latest — Laura Osnes, Broadway’s Cinderella.
“It reminds me of what it must have been like to dress Audrey Hepburn,” Long says. “I was looking at a fitting photo my assistant took of Laura in her white ball gown, and asked, ‘Is this a trick lens or is this really Laura?’ Because she looked 6 feet tall, her waist looked 18 inches and she was just . . . a goddess!”
Backstage in brown flats, Forever 21 jeans and an orange T-shirt, the 27-year-old “Cinderella” star looks more “girl next door” than goddess, even with a pair of crystal slippers dangling from her hand. They have a surprisingly low heel — because Santino Fontana, who plays the prince, is already wearing lifts. There are four more or less identical pairs of shoes in the show (see sidebar).
“Tammy’s my dresser — she handles all the shoe-ography — and I trust her with my life,” Osnes says. “The show is about shoes and costumes, in a way, so it’s very important that everything stays straight.”
But “Cinderella” is also about magic, and Osnes’ life has had its share, though it didn’t start that way. She grew up in the Minnesota suburbs and seemed likely to stay there until 2007, when fate intervened, in the form of reality TV. The show was “Grease — You’re the One That I Want!” — NBC’s “American Idol”-esque way of having the public pick the principals of a new Broadway revival.
Turns out, Osnes was already playing Sandy — in a dinner theater. “I’m singing ‘It’s Raining on Prom Night,’ while glasses are clanking,” she recalls. “But they had a great chicken dish!”
With her director’s blessing, Osnes flew to LA, where she clinched an audition, then a spot on the show — and another, and another. “The doors kept opening, [but] I said, ‘If it doesn’t happen, I’ll go back to Minnesota and maybe someday make my way to New York,’ ” she says. “I just followed my heart.”
She followed it all the way to Broadway, where “Grease” opened that summer to lousy reviews, except for Osnes’ luminous Sandy. Since then, it’s been one show after another: “South Pacific,” “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Anything Goes” and now
“Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” which opened Sunday to warm reviews — and raves for Osnes and Long’s costumes. And her real Prince Charming? That would be Nate Johnson, whose photo, along with a shot of their Chihuahua mix, Lyla, adorns her dressing room. They’d worked together in a Minnesota children’s theater production of “Aladdin.” Osnes was in the ensemble, covering Jasmine. Fontana, her Broadway prince, had been asked to cover Aladdin, but he turned it down and the part fell to Johnson.
One day, Osnes says, the stars of the show collided: “They turned at just the right velocity, and he chipped a tooth on her forehead.” A bloodied Jasmine and Aladdin were taken to the hospital, and their covers — Osnes and Johnson, who’d become friends while in the ensemble — took the stage. “We had our first kiss onstage, and that kinda sealed the deal!” They married, moved to New York — to the Upper West Side, where Johnson has a photo studio — and seem to be living happily ever after. Who needs glass slippers?
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