Wicked’s Etai BenShlomo on How Brando Led Him to Broadway

Age and Hometown: 23. Coral Springs, Florida.

Current role: Making his Broadway dubut as the lovelorn Boq in Broadway’s Wicked.  

Movie Buff Fom Birth: Unlike many young Broadway stars, Etai (pronounced e-TYE) BenShlomo's acting ambitions didn’t begin on the stage. “My parents introduced me to great movies at a young age, even if they weren’t kid-appropriate!” he says. “I saw things like The Godfather and A Clockwork Orange, and I’ve been a film fanatic ever since.” It wasn’t until the eighth grade that some friends dragged BenShlomo to a theater audition. “My middle school was doing a musical,” he recalls, “but I was going to be like Brando or Pacino—they don’t sing, so musicals were beneath me.” In the end, perhaps it was the show's movie origin that appealed. “We did The Wizard of Oz,” he says, “and I played the Tin Man. I decided musicals were OK.”

To the Stagedoor Manor Born: Musicals turned out to be more than OK: BenShlomo spent his high school summers at the famous theater camp Stagedoor Manor before entering the University of Michigan's musical theater program and another kind of camp entirely. “After my freshman year, I was hired at the St. Louis MUNY, an outdoor theater,” he says. “We called it Camp MUNY because it felt like Stagedoor, only I was getting paid and I didn’t have a curfew!” That summer the theater was doing Oliver! and—what else?—The Wizard of Oz, “so I thought short people would be in demand,” he jokes. In later seasons, he even got a chance to channel Brando. “When you’re doing Les Miz in 92 degree heat and you’re supposed to be freezing on the streets of Paris, that takes some serious method work.”

Following the Yellow Brick Road: Wizard of Oz experience aside, Wicked always seemed a natural fit for BenShlomo. “People have often said Boq would be a good role for me, mostly because I’m 5 foot 6,” he says with a laugh, “but also because he pines for this girl, maybe a little too hard, and that’s not exactly foreign territory for me.” Post-Wicked, BenShlomo would love to explore a different kind of foreign territory, having fallen in love with Chekhov while studying abroad at the Moscow Art Theatre in college. “Every young actor’s dream is to play Constantine in The Seagull,” he confesses. And, of course, he says, “There’s always the movies!”