Hailey Kilgore Was a Teenage Tony Nominee—Now as an Adult, She Leads Hadestown with No Fear

The Broadway Show

by Hayley Levitt • Apr 17, 2025

Hailey Kilgore
(Photo by Sergio Villarini for Broadway.com)

Hailey Kilgore is accustomed to building a home among the gods.

Since January, she’s been cavorting with Greek deities as Hadestown’s Eurydice—her first time back on Broadway since praying to the Vodou-inspired Asaka, Agwe, Erzulie and Papa Ge in Michael Arden’s 2017 revival of Once on This Island. She was just 18 when she made her Broadway debut as tragic heroine Ti Moune, the role that made her a Tony nominee by 19. And while she was making the harried rounds that Tony season, someone in her orbit made a glum prediction: “You’re going to go to TV and film and we’re just going to lose you.”

Hailey Kilgore in "Once in This Island"
(Photo: Joan Marcus)

“I just remember looking at them and being like, ‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’” she tells Tamsen Fadal on The Broadway Show. “Then to realize it’s been eight years is…That cannot happen again.”

Since her breakout turn in Once on This Island, Kilgore has indeed carved a space for herself in TV and film: She’s appeared in Steven Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories; the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect, starring Jennifer Hudson; and four seasons of the crime drama Raising Kanan. Still, she vows to not be lost for good: “I need to come back and do theater more frequently.”

For one thing, Broadway is different at 26 than it is as a teenager. “Once on This Island—I was a student," she says. "I was just absorbing as much information as I could.”

One of the people who made sure of that eight years ago was Broadway's original Eurydice: “Eva Noblezada was so kind to me when I was a little bitty baby,” Kilgore remembers fondly. “She took the time to reach out and pull me in and be like, ‘This is how things work. You're going to be fine.’ She took me under her wing because she had done it before with Miss Saigon.” Noblezada is now on stage just four blocks north of Kilgore as Cabaret’s new Sally Bowles, but in 2017, she was in the middle of her own Broadway debut as Kim in Miss Saigon, a role she also took on at 18 for the London run that preceded Broadway.

Carlos Valdes and Hailey Kilgore in "Hadestown"
(Photo: Evan Zimmerman)

Wrapping up Miss Saigon, Noblezada was next headed to London for the 2018 National Theatre run of Hadestown. Kilgore remembers not quite grasping the concept. “I was like, ‘OK…it's a Greek tragedy.’ Then when they came to Broadway…whoa. It gave me the same feeling that Once on This Island gave me: It’s humanity and it’s the heart of people.”

She saw the show 14 more times.

“In my shower, I have played every track in Hadestown,” Kilgore says unabashedly. “I have been Hades. I have been Orpheus. I’ve been a Fate, honey!” And now, through May 4, she’s Eurydice—and for an audience much larger than a shampoo bottle.

“I feel so rejuvenated,” she says of being back on stage. And best of all, “I don't have to do it scared now. I started out so young and I just didn't know. To be welcomed back into a space where people are so real and this is what they love, it’s amazing.”