Carmen Cusack on Playing Trailblazer Clare Boothe Luce in Flying Over Sunset

Originally scheduled to start performances on March 12, 2020, the day the Broadway shutdown was announced, Flying Over Sunset has officially cleared for landing, opening at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater on December 13. On a recent episode of The Broadway Show, Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek met up with Carmen Cusack at LCT to talk about the trip of a musical.

In the show, Cusack and co-stars Tony Yazbeck and Harry Hadden-Paton play fictionalized versions of real people who experimented with LSD. The Tony nominee spoke about the wonder of getting to know the multi-talented Clare Boothe Luce, whom she portrays. "I didn't know anything about her until I did this project, and I thought, 'Why didn't I know about this woman? Why don't we all know more about this woman?' She really was that woman—a proper trailblazer. She did everything. She was a journalist. She was a playwright. She was an ambassador for Italy. She was an ambassador for Brazil, I think, for three days and then she said, 'I don't want to do this anymore,'" Cusack said. "My favorite thing about playing her is her wit, and her freedom to just say whatever she was thinking and the strength that she had. In that day and age, women were so careful about what they said. She wasn't careful. She was incredibly smart, and people were attracted to her."

Luce also had a Broadway career. She understudied the Little Girl in The Dummy at the age of 11. She went on to write the plays Abide with Me, Kiss the Boys Good-bye, Margin for Error and The Women, a commentary on the pampered lives and power struggles of wealthy Manhattan socialites.

Through her research on Luce and her development of her own take on the character, Cusack considered why Luce is as open to tripping. "She had some very hard life lessons," Cusack said. "She lost her mother, and then, six years later, she lost her 19-year-old daughter. Both car accidents. I think she was trying to find her way past the grief. She really wanted to search her soul, and she felt that acid was going to help her do that."

Watch the interview below, and head here to check your local listings for The Broadway Show. Hosted by Emmy-winning anchor Tamsen Fadal, it is the only nationally syndicated weekly theater news program.