Kate Reinders

Kate Reinders is an American actress and singer born on December 10, 1980, in Seattle, Washington. She is recognized for her stage work across multiple Broadway productions between 1999 and 2015, as well as for her television role as Miss Jenn in the Disney+ musical mockumentary series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which ran from 2019 to 2023.

Reinders made her Broadway debut in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, working as a swing and understudy for the roles of Amy Lawrence and Becky Thatcher. She continued in an understudy capacity in the 2002 Broadway revival of Into the Woods, covering the roles of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Milky White, and Rapunzel. Her first starring role on Broadway came in the 2003 revival of Gypsy, in which she played June. She followed that with the role of Caroline in the 2005 jukebox musical Good Vibrations.

Reinders played Glinda in the 2005 Chicago production of Wicked, appearing alongside Ana Gasteyer as Elphaba. That performance earned her a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for Best Actress in a Principal Role. She and Gasteyer concluded their Chicago runs on January 22, 2006. On May 30, 2006, Reinders stepped into the Broadway production of Wicked, replacing Megan Hilty as Glinda at the Gershwin Theatre. During that run, she performed "Popular" on an all-celebrity episode of Jeopardy! during a Daily Double segment about Wicked, with TV personality Nancy Grace providing the correct response. Reinders ended her Broadway run in the show on January 7, 2007, alongside Gasteyer, who had rejoined the production. On October 27, 2008, Reinders returned to the Gershwin Theatre to participate in The Yellow Brick Road Not Taken, a presentation of scenes and songs cut from early drafts of Wicked.

Outside of her Broadway work, Reinders performed in Party Come Here at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which ran from July 25 through August 5, 2007, and appeared in The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero at the Off-Broadway DR2 Theater that same year. She also appeared in the concert revue For The Record: Baz Luhrmann in Los Angeles, presented by ROCKLA for Show at Barre, which ran from February 12 to June 30, 2011, alongside Jenna Leigh Green, Arielle Jacobs, and Tracie Thoms.

Reinders originated the role of Portia in the Broadway musical comedy Something Rotten!, which opened on April 22, 2015, at the St. James Theatre. Her final performance in the production was on July 16, 2016. The original cast recording of Something Rotten! received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theater Album in 2016. She later served as standby for the role of Corky in the Broadway production of Meteor Shower, and in October 2018 assumed the role of Cynthia Weil in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical on Broadway, replacing Kara Lindsay beginning October 19 of that year.

On television, Reinders held a recurring role as Ginger in the third season of Ugly Betty and starred as the regular character Paula Morgan on the Lifetime series Sherri, opposite former The View co-host Sherri Shepherd, which premiered on October 5, 2009. She also co-starred with Constantine Maroulis and Sarah Litzsinger in an independent television pilot called Teachers, and was a member of the band Tastiskank alongside Litzsinger. Reinders additionally voiced the character Jezebel in the video game Saints Row: Gat out of Hell and appeared in a Mohegan Sun commercial with former Wicked co-star Saycon Sengbloh, set to the Rick James song "Super Freak."

In her personal life, Reinders married actor Andrew Samonsky in May 2016, and the couple welcomed a son, Luke, in 2017.