Hadestown Star Jordan Fisher Has Never Been More Content With His Job On or Off Stage

In the span of a decade, Jordan Fisher has made a seamless transition from Disney kid to Broadway star.

He launched his career on Disney Channel, showing off his vocal chops on the comedy series Liv and Maddie and in the popular Teen Beach movies. He eventually expanded the audience for his musicianship crooning a memorable rendition of “Those Magic Changes” as Doody in Fox’s 2016 Grease Live, helmed by Tony-winning Hamilton director Thomas Kail. Lo and behold, by the end of the year, Fisher was making his Broadway debut in Hamilton as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton. A few years later, he straddled the pandemic with a splintered stint leading Dear Evan Hansen (Hamilton’s successor as the Tony-winning Best Musical). And just this past March, he serenaded Johanna as the swooning Anthony in Kail’s Tony-nominated revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd.

Take Evan’s introverted demeanor, Anthony’s idealistic worldview and John Laurens’ revolutionary spirit—and add a dash of Doody’s busking skills—and you have a recipe for Fisher’s latest Broadway gig as Orpheus (opposite Solea Pfeiffer’s Eurydice) in Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown (another Tony-winning Best Musical).

“I think at the end of the day, it is one of the more human-oriented theatrical experiences,” says Fisher to The Broadway Show’s Tamsen Fadal from his dressing room at the Walter Kerr Theatre. “For a musical on Broadway to be such a beautiful story of loss and of gain…how to lean on one another and to build and form community, and to see ourselves in actions that we don’t necessarily love—I think those small reminders ultimately heal.”

“And selfishly,” Fisher adds, “it’s one where I get to stretch and exercise everything that I love about storytelling.” Guitar in hand (in place of Orpheus’ lyre), Fisher gets to join the Hadestown band in their onstage music-making. “That’s something that I didn’t know would be as rewarding as it is,” he says.

Still, his most rewarding job is the one he takes on at home during daylight hours. “Yeah, I’m a daddy,” he tells Fadal beaming about his year-and-a-half-old son Riley. “My favorite part of it is how it has affected everything else in my life— emphasis on else…It’s all shrunk.”

Relaying a conversation he had with his costar Betty Who, who plays Persephone (Fisher takes a pause to boast about her performance, describing it as “luscious” and “healing”), he finds himself in agreement with her characterization of life inside the world of Hadestown: “I feel like I have my day, and then I’m sitting on the couch and I put on my VR goggles and I live my dream for two-and-a-half hours.”

“For the first time in my life, I’m so content where we are,” says Fisher with an easy breath. “We get to do this, you know? I’m here at the Walter Kerr Theatre. I’m Orpheus in Hadestown. And I couldn’t be happier about that.”