What's Up, Krysta Rodriguez? The Addams Family Standout on Bonding with Her B'way Kin

Her character may be based on the well-known nursery rhyme line, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe,” but The Addams Family’s Krysta Rodriguez is anything but woeful about appearing alongside Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in the new hit musical. The young star, who understudied or served as a replacement in Good Vibrations, A Chorus Line, Spring Awakening and In the Heights, is reveling in her first original Broadway role. She plays the pivotal part of Wednesday Addams, a teenager thrilled and confused by her first romance. Broadway.com recently chatted with the up-and-comer in her sunny dressing room at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

What is it like to originate a role on Broadway?
It’s awesome. I’d been understudying a lot, which has been great and has exercised my ability to do a lot of things: I played five completely different women in a week or three completely different women in In the Heights—with different vocal ranges and different speaking registers and accents and all these kind of things that are going on. I didn’t finish college, so that was like my college. But when you’re singing somebody else’s music, it’s like wearing someone else’s clothes; you can tell it’s not yours. This feels like mine.

Your Broadway debut was in the Beach Boys musical Good Vibrations. This is pretty far from that beachy show.
I’m so pale! I can’t tan at all. I went to the Bahamas in between Chicago and here because I needed to thaw out. I had this giant straw hat and a full bathing suit—it was very 1930s.

If you ever went through a Goth phase, now is the time to revisit it.
I was a tomboy, but I wasn’t very Goth. I do give off a Goth vibe because of my coloring. When I moved to New York, people always asked me where I’m from, and when I’d say Southern California, it’d blow their minds. I’ve always had this sharp, edgy New York vibe. I’m not into the blond, surfy, sporty Southern California thing. I relate to that in [Charles Addams’ original Addams Family] cartoons in The New Yorker. They’re dry and witty and that speaks to me.

In addition to the cartoons, did you have a connection to the Addams Family before taking on this show?
I think people my age are really connected to the movies. I particularly connected with Christina Ricci [who played Wednesday on the big screen]. She was so perfect, really whip-smart with that great dour demeanor. When you’re young and you want to be an actor, you narrow in on those people that are your age and are doing what you want to do, so I focused on her. I’m sure boys my age focused on Macaulay Culkin. I always remembered her from The Addams Family movie. It’s pretty cool that I get to do this now.

Let’s dish about your co-stars a little bit. Tell me about working with Nathan Lane.
Nathan’s amazing. He is just by far the funniest human being ever.

Is he always on?
He’s not always like Mr. Broadway—that would be exhausting. I love it when he sings to me [on stage], that’s my favorite part of the whole show. Besides the fact that he’s a brilliant comedian, it’s amazing to watch him go through the emotion of that song every night. A lot of times I forget that I’m in the show, and I’m just literally watching him from a technical standpoint. It’s masterful, what he can do. For those three minutes, I imagine that Nathan Lane is my dad.

You and Wes Taylor seems like close buds.
We’re like super, married buds! In the beginning of rehearsal, we’d tell a joke and Nathan would laugh, and we’d be like, “Oh my God, we just made Nathan Lane laugh!” It was the best feeling. It’s also that way with Adam [Riegler, who plays Pugsley]. If you make him laugh, you know you’re golden. He’s hysterical. He’s also my favorite person in the building.

How fun that you get to literally torture your favorite person nightly.
Yeah, I do. But offstage, I just want to squeeze him. He’s just so cute.

So The Addams Family cast has some real family bonding?
Yes. Bebe took on the role of mother to me very quickly, and we formed a nice mother-daughter bond. People want to imagine what it would be like if all of these crazy characters came together, but they don’t know who the real people are. They know [the actors] as Mr. Broadway [Lane] and Lilith [Neuwirth], Frank ‘N’ Furter [Terrence Mann] and Lucille from Parade [Carolee Carmello]. It’s like, “What would happen if all of them were at a dinner party?!” But we’re just people and professionals. We’re as much of a family as any family is. We’re a unit.

How incredible to bond with people you’ve looked up to.
I came to New York when I was 13, and I saw Bebe in Chicago and Terry [Terrence Mann] in The Scarlet Pimpernel. That was the pivotal trip for me. There’s a secret: I have a picture of Terry and me at the stage door [of The Scarlet Pimpernel]. I was 13. You can tell by the redness in my cheeks in the picture that I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m standing with Terrence Mann!” That picture’s his opening night gift. [Laughs.]