Listen to LaChanze! Jagged Little Pill's Celia Rose Gooding Reveals Her Mom's Best Advice

Celia Rose Gooding isn’t just Broadway’s newest star, leading Jagged Little Pill as Frankie Healy, the rebellious teen in Diablo Cody and Alanis Morissette’s jukebox musical. She is also the daughter of Tony winner LaChanze, who became a Broadway favorite after originating the roles of Ti Moune and Celie in Once on This Island and The Color Purple, respectively. In a recent #LiveAtFive appearance, Gooding shared some of her mother’s acting advice. 

“I always turn to my mom in situations where I’m like, ‘What would you have wanted to hear when you were in my position?” Gooding told Broadway.com's Paul Wontorek. “She’s told me to stay present and stay balanced. She’s always made sure that I’m getting enough sleep, and that I’m eating three balanced meals a day." 

Gooding joined Jagged Little Pill during the musical’s first 2016 workshop, and she leaned on LaChanze for support throughout the show’s long development process, nervous the creative team might recast her role. “My mom was like, ‘Listen, if they do, they do. If they don’t, they don’t. Enjoy what you have right now, because that’s always going to be yours,'” Gooding recalled. “She’s always the person to remind me to exhale and have fun, because we’re telling stories for a living.” She then added, “Me still being very much a kid, I’m so frazzled and crazy, and so sometimes I forget important things like that.” 

Gooding was the same age as the teenage Frankie when she started that first Jagged workshop. Now 19 years old, the actor has matured alongside her character. “Frankie is figuring out her sexuality, figuring out what it means to be black," she explained. "She’s coming into that intersectionality of queer, black womanhood—an activist and dreamer and lover and fighter." That's not dissimilar to Gooding's own experience, “I’ve grown a lot as a queer, black activist trying to make sense of this crazy world."

Frankie is a black teen adopted by a white family, who lives in mostly white Connecticut. To get at that sense of alienation, Gooding tapped into her own personal experience. The actor lost her father during the September 11 World Trade Center attacks; he had been working in the North Tower when it fell. The emotional wounds of that loss tie Gooding to Frankie’s own struggles as an adopted child who does not know her birth parents. “Not having a father in my life, or having one who I lost, really informs Frankie’s story," she explained. "It’s a feeling of yearning, and it’s a feeling of acceptance.” She describes managing the grief as a balancing act, saying, “Some days there are not so great days. And learning to accept that allows me a lot of healing, and I think it allows Frankie a lot of healing, too.”

To keep her inspired, Gooding has a framed photograph of her parents’ wedding day in her dressing room. “It’s something I look at so I can inform Frankie: ‘That’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for two parents in love who love their kids and want the best for them,'” she said. For Gooding, getting to make her Broadway debut playing such a complicated, multifacted character has been a joy. “[The musical’s] allowing me to teach people who may not know what it’s like to be a black, queer woman in American suburbia," she said. 

Jagged Little Pill is currently running on Broadway.

Watch the rest of Gooding's #LiveAtFive interview below.