Phillipa Soo

Phillipa Anne Soo, born May 31, 1990, in Libertyville, Illinois, is an American actress whose career has centered on leading roles in Broadway musicals. Her father is Chinese American, with paternal grandparents who emigrated from China to the United States, and he became a doctor; her mother, originally from Southern Illinois, has a background in the arts. Soo attended Libertyville High School from 2004 to 2008 before enrolling at the Juilliard School, where she completed the acting program in 2012.

Following her graduation from Juilliard, Soo was cast as Natasha Rostova in the Ars Nova Off-Broadway production of Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, adapted from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. The production transferred from Ars Nova to Kazino, a tent custom-built for the show. In 2013, she appeared in five episodes of the second season of the NBC series Smash, playing a recurring character named Lexi, before the show was cancelled. That same year she was cast in the television pilot Dangerous Liaisons in a supporting role as Nia, though the pilot was not picked up to series.

Director Thomas Kail and writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, having seen Soo in The Great Comet, invited her to participate in an early 2014 reading of Hamilton, where she read the role of Eliza. She went on to originate the role of Eliza Hamilton when the musical premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater and subsequently on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, beginning in 2015. The performance earned her a nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical at the 70th Tony Awards in 2016, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album that same year. Soo played her final performance in Hamilton on July 9, 2016, with Lexi Lawson succeeding her in the role. A live stage recording of the production was released on Disney+ in 2020, and Soo received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards for her performance in it.

Soo next took on the title role of Amélie Poulain in Amélie, A New Musical, first in a pre-Broadway engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles from December 2016 to January 2017, then on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where the production opened officially on April 3, 2017, and ran through May 21, 2017. Later that year she returned to Broadway as Rebecca in The Parisian Woman, an original play by Beau Willimon, which began previews at the Hudson Theatre on November 7, 2017, opened November 30, and ran through March 11, 2018. In 2018, Soo was cast in the CBS military drama The Code, which aired for one season before its cancellation in July 2019.

In 2022, Soo portrayed suffragist Inez Milholland in Shaina Taub's musical Suffs, which premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater, running from April 6 through May 29, 2022. She did not reprise the role when the production transferred to Broadway. That same year she was announced as Cinderella in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods at the St. James Theatre, appearing alongside Sara Bareilles, Brian D'Arcy James, Gavin Creel, Joshua Henry, Patina Miller, and Cheyenne Jackson, and remaining with the production through September 4, 2022. Her work in Into the Woods earned her a second Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. Also in 2022, Soo played Sarah Brown in a revival of Guys and Dolls at The Kennedy Center, a cast that included her husband, Steven Pasquale, along with James Monroe Iglehart, Jessie Mueller, Rachel Dratch, and Kevin Chamberlin.

In November 2022, it was announced that Soo would star as Guenevere in the Broadway revival of the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, opposite Andrew Burnap and Jordan Donica. The production opened in March 2023 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, directed by Bartlett Sher and featuring a revised book by Aaron Sorkin. For that performance, Soo received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical in 2023, as well as a Drama League Award nomination for Distinguished Performance.

Beyond Broadway, Soo appeared in the animated film Over the Moon and the romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery, both in 2020, and in the romantic dramedy One True Loves in 2023, on which she also served as executive producer. Her television work includes supporting roles in the Hulu miniseries Dopesick in 2021 and the Apple TV+ series Shining Girls in 2022. In 2024, she was cast as Avery Morgan in the ABC medical drama Doctor Odyssey. That same year, Soo co-wrote a children's book, Piper Chen Sings, with her sister-in-law Maris Pasquale Doran; published by Random House Studio, it became a New York Times best seller. Also in 2024, she played the role of Fox on the concept album Warriors by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis. In August 2025, Soo played Mary Magdalene in a concert revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl, opposite Cynthia Erivo in the title role.

Inspired by the character of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, Soo established the Eliza Project in partnership with Graham Windham, the first private orphanage in New York City, referenced in the closing song of Hamilton. Through the initiative, Soo has worked to provide students at the Graham School with workshops in acting, dancing, and rap, with the stated mission of using the arts as a means of expression and outlet.