Carmen Cusack on How She's Been Keeping Busy as She Waits for the Return of Flying Over Sunset

Carmen Cusack and the company of Lincoln Center Theater's Flying Over Sunset was preparing to perform the new original musical in front of a paying audience for the first time on March 12. It's almost three months later, and that still hasn't happened. Hours before they were set to the take their first bow, it was announced that all Broadway theaters would go dark due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cusack stars as diplomat Clare Boothe Luce, telling the fictional journey of Luce's LSD trips along with Tony Yazbeck as movie star Cary Grant and Harry Hadden-Patton as writer Aldous Huxley. Cusack checked in with Broadway.com's Paul Wontorek about the show, what it's like to be "one of the guys" and memories of Bright Star.

Cusack, who flew home to California after Broadway shut down, can still remember what she was feeling in theh time leading up to taking the stage for the first preview. "[I was] ready to start the marathon," she said in a recent episode of #LiveatFive: Home Edition. "All of a sudden, boom I'm back in L.A., in my home. I had all this nervous energy, and I was really feeling for this situation, so I just got to work and made about 80 masks for a medical facility in Alabama. I've been mostly keeping busy by making masks and writing music."

Starring in Flying Over Sunset has provided Cusack with a new work situation. "I've never been surrounded by just men on a stage with me," she said. "I had to learn how to really hold my own in a situation. It's all so fast and snappy. They're all beautiful performers and actors with really pretty and kind souls. It's such an ensemble cast, and I miss them tremendously. Sometiems you have these terrible nightmares about having to go and do a show, I still have nightmares about going out and doing Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, but I have not had a panic attack over having to just jump on the stage to do Flying Over Sunset because I can't wait to do that when the time comes."

Before taking Sunset, Cusack made her Broadway debut in Bright Star. Cusack, who garnered a Tony nomination for her performance, was with the production since its early days all the way through leading the national tour post-Broadway. "The memory that is sticking in my head is the workshops we did prior to getting it on a stage," Cusack said. "Because of the creators, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, they didn't invite the industry, they invited their friends. You can imagine some of the friends that would show up. I would be in this tiny room crying my eyes out and jumping up and down like a crazy person in front of people that I lived my life watching and adoring. I adore that show so much."

Watch Cusack talk about the research she did to get into the mind of her character and more in the full episode below!