Lola Tung and Ani DiFranco, Hadestown’s New Righteous Babes, Are a Match Made in the Underworld

On February 9, two righteous babes—to borrow the name of the record label that released a concept album called Hadestown back in 2010—will make their Broadway debuts in the Tony-winning musical of the same name. Lola Tung, the breakout star of The Summer I Turned Pretty, will play Hadestown's Eurydice, while Ani DiFranco, the “Not a Pretty Girl” singer, alternative folk trailblazer—and owner of the aforementioned record label—will take on the role of Persephone.

One is a Gen Z it girl, the other an icon for Gen Xers and older millennials. Both have forged their own paths and attracted intensely devoted followings. Both, too, are passionate about personal expression, change-making and the power of art. As it turns out, there's plenty of reasons to wonder: Did fate bring them together?

Catching the Performing Bug at a Young Age

In sixth grade, Tung was cast in her school production of The Wizard of Oz. “I got the role of Tinman and had the greatest time doing the show,” she told Numéro. “I loved every part of the process. I loved rehearsing, learning my lines, the costumes, the makeup and most of all, performing the show. I felt so grounded and alive on the stage. I had so much fun. I think after that show I knew that I wanted to act and perform for the rest of my life.”

DiFranco was playing gigs around Buffalo, New York, when she was just nine years old. Her musical partner was a grown man she met while buying a guitar at a music store. “We started sort of hanging out,” she told Rolling Stone. “He started bringing me to his shows and I played with him. For me, it was just a sh*t load of fun to be hanging, playing music. For him it was kind of a novelty to have this little girl around singing duets.”

New York City Girls at Heart

DiFranco moved away from home at the age of 15 and wound up in New York by the time she was 19. “I cried my way through the first year for every reason that you can imagine,” she told The New York Times. “I had experiences that were terrifying, that were life-threatening but also just life-changing and beautiful and culturally mind-blowing. The lessons that New York has for you around every corner—it was a big part of my young adulthood, this city.”

Though she shoots The Summer I Turned Pretty in the beachside community of Wilmington, North Carolina, the City is never far from Tung’s mind. In several interviews, she has talked about being inspired by New York street fashion and the excitement of having access to live theater. (It was a big deal when her mother got her and her sister tickets to Hamilton. “I was obsessed,” she said.) “I think I'm a city girl at heart,” Tung commented. “[New York City] is my home, and I love it here.”

Playing Guitar for Self-Expression and Connection

For DiFranco, her guitar is like “another limb.” “Sometimes when there’s nowhere else to turn and nobody, it’s there for me,” she said. “Sometimes when my own voice is failing me, my guitar can say it for me.”

Tung plays guitar too, including while hanging out with her The Summer I Turned Pretty co-stars. “[W]e were all just sitting together near where we were staying in Wilmington and I started playing,” she told Seventeen. “I think it was some Olivia Rodrigo—it might have been ‘Happier.’ I started playing and the guys kind of didn't know the lyrics, but they all pulled it up on their phones and we all started singing together. And I was like, This is really cute. It was very fun.” 

A Passion for the Planet

Tung and DiFranco aren’t afraid to take a stand on the issues that are important to them. They’ve both spoken out, for example, on women’s reproductive rights (“I believe in a woman’s right to choose,” Tung has said) and issues of representation and visibility (“I’ve got no criteria for sex or race, I just want to hear your voice, I just want to see your face,” DiFranco sings on “In or Out”).

One issue that’s meaningful to them both: caring for the planet. “This planet is our only home and we must take care of it in order to keep inhabiting it,” Tung has said, echoing DiFranco’s own sentiments on the matter: “There are issues where the struggle is that much more acute and essential. And I think certainly climate change and the fossil oil industry, if we don’t address that first, we don’t have an opportunity to address anything else.”

Climate change also happens to be one of the themes that runs through Hadestown: The earth, in the show, is either freezing cold or blazing hot, its natural balance thrown catastrophically out of balance by industrialization.

Their Hadestown Roles Were a Long Time Coming

Back in 2022, InStyle asked Tung what her dream theater role would be. “That's very difficult,” Tung said. “There are so many. But right before everything shut down in 2020, before the pandemic, I saw Hadestown on Broadway, and it was such a beautiful show. It was so magical, and the music is so beautiful. And I think Eurydice is such a beautiful character and that'd be really cool.”

For her part, DiFranco originated the role of Persephone on the original concept album, and helped composer Anaīs Mitchell develop the work. Long before then, her music was a huge influence on Mitchell’s own songwriting. “Poetic, bold, radically emotive and fun, she simply has been a mythic figure in my life,” Mitchell said last year, “and I can’t think of anything more beautifully full circle than Ani playing the role of Persephone on Broadway.”

Sounds to us like a match made in Hades.