Laura Benanti

Laura Ilene Benanti, born July 15, 1979, in New York City, is an American actress and singer whose Broadway career spans from 1998 to 2021. Born Laura Vidnovic, she is the daughter of Linda Wonneberger, a vocal coach and former actress, and Martin Vidnovic, a Broadway actor and singer. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she relocated to Kinnelon, New Jersey, with her mother and stepfather Salvatore Benanti, a psychotherapist, whose surname she adopted. She is of Serbian, German, and Irish heritage. Benanti graduated from Kinnelon High School in 1997, having participated in numerous high school and community productions, including roles in Evita, Follies, and Into the Woods. At sixteen, she played the title role in her school's production of Hello, Dolly! and received a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Outstanding Actress in a high school production.

Benanti's path to Broadway began when Paper Mill Playhouse's then-artistic director Robert Johanson recommended her for the role of Liesl in the 1998 Broadway revival of The Sound of Music. After several callbacks, producers determined she appeared too mature for Liesl and instead cast her as one of the nuns, with an assignment to understudy Rebecca Luker as Maria. She had attended New York University for only two weeks when the dean recommended she take a leave of absence to accept the role. Benanti covered the role of Maria for two weeks during Luker's vacation and subsequently took over the part permanently when Luker departed the production. The following year, she appeared in the Broadway revue Swing!, earning her first Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.

In 2002, Benanti played Cinderella in the Broadway revival of Into the Woods, a role she had performed as a teenager in a high school production. The performance earned her both a Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. During the run, a mid-performance pratfall resulted in a fractured neck, herniating two discs directly onto her spinal cord and cutting off spinal fluid. The injury was initially misdiagnosed, and producers asked her not to disclose it publicly; when she began missing performances, she faced rumors of unprofessional behavior. Eight months after the initial injury, she received a correct diagnosis and underwent surgery that carried a risk of damaging her voice, though the procedure was successful. She was eventually replaced in the show by Erin Dilly.

Three weeks after her spinal surgery, Benanti began previews in March 2003 for the Broadway revival of Nine, in which she played Claudia, a movie star who serves as muse to a film director played by Antonio Banderas. She remained with the production until September 2003. From April to December 2006, she played Julia Sullivan in the Broadway musical The Wedding Singer.

Benanti's most celebrated stage work came with the musical Gypsy. In July 2007, she played Louise in a three-week Encores! staged concert production at New York City Center, alongside Patti LuPone as Rose and Boyd Gaines as Herbie. The production transferred to Broadway in March 2008 and ran until January 2009. Her portrayal of the neglected Louise drew widespread critical praise, with The New York Times's Ben Brantley describing it as the performance of her career. Benanti won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for the role. She later told The New York Times that she drew on her own childhood loneliness when developing the character.

Following Gypsy, Benanti appeared in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), which opened at the Lyceum Theatre on November 19, 2009. She received a Tony nomination for her work in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2010, and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical in 2011. She earned an additional Tony nomination for She Loves Me in 2016. Her later Broadway credits include Meteor Shower in 2017, My Fair Lady in 2018, and the comedy The Silver Wedding.

Beyond the stage, Benanti has maintained an active television career. She played Lauren Bennett on the NBC sitcom Go On from 2012 to 2013, and Sadie Stone in the ABC musical drama Nashville from 2014 to 2015. She portrayed both Alura and Astra in the CBS series Supergirl from 2015 to 2016, and Edie Randall in the TBS comedy The Detour from 2017 to 2019. Beginning in 2016, she took on a recurring role as First Lady Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She subsequently appeared as Kiki Hope in the HBO Max revival of Gossip Girl from 2021 to 2023, and as Susan Blane in the HBO drama series The Gilded Age in 2023.

Benanti's recorded work includes original cast albums from each of her Broadway productions, as well as contributions to compilation albums featuring the music of Stephen Schwartz and Maury Yeston. She participated in a studio cast recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro, released by Sony Classics in February 2009, and appears on the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C.'s live album You've Got to Be Carefully Taught: The Songs of Hammerstein & Sondheim, drawn from a 2002 performance at the Kennedy Center. A guitarist and songwriter, she has written songs privately since at least the early 2000s.