Jordan Fisher Brings His Whole Heart to Moulin Rouge!—On Stage and Off

One eight-minute FaceTime call and the promise of a dressing room the size of an apartment—that’s all it took for Solea Pfeiffer to convince Jordan Fisher to join Moulin Rouge! The two had recently starred together in Hadestown, and Fisher was gearing up for a limited run in Urinetown when Pfeiffer called him from backstage at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre.

“What are you doing next?” she asked.

Then came the pitch: a show she loved, a cast she adored and the chance for them to sing together again. “She was like, ‘You’ll get to sing your face off, and we’ll be together every night,’” Fisher recalls. “I was like, ‘Man, that doesn’t sound too bad.’ And here we are.”

He’s become one of the most in-demand young musical theater stars of the last decade. He got his start on teen TV fare, but Broadway fans first took notice when he played Doody in Grease Live!—a turn that led to his casting in Hamilton on Broadway by director Thomas Kail. He later appeared on TV in Rent: Live, The Flash and won the 25th season of Dancing with the Stars, while Broadway audiences have seen his versatility in Dear Evan Hansen, Sweeney Todd and Hadestown. But for the 30-year-old actor, singer and father, playing Christian in Moulin Rouge! isn't just another credit—it’s the kind of gig that fills him up in all the right ways.

Speaking from that deluxe dressing room a few weeks into the run, Fisher already felt something rare: settled. “I’ve never been so warmly welcomed so quickly into a space like this,” he says. That kind of culture, he explains, starts from the top. “It’s stage management, it’s the producers, it’s physical therapy being available—it’s people making sure everyone is taken care of.”

The rest is alchemy. “What we do is already so hard. There’s no room for bullshit,” he says. “Everyone here wants to be here. We have hard days and great days, but there’s a shared joy in doing the work.”

He’s seen the opposite in other productions. “You can tell when people are clocking in and out, or feel unseen. Here, there’s effort—human effort—to check in with one another. That goes such a long way.”

It helps, of course, when your scene partner feels like home. “To go to work and sing fun songs with your best friend every night? It’s beautiful,” Fisher says of Pfeiffer. “The trust, the time, the ups and downs—we just lock in. That’s what makes it magical.”

Fisher and Pfeiffer first shared the stage in Hadestown, portraying the doomed lovers Orpheus and Eurydice. Their onstage chemistry was palpable, and that connection has only deepened as they reunite in Moulin Rouge! “I want to do everything with her,” Fisher says.

He lights up when talking about her talent. “It feels like what it must have been to do shows with Audra [McDonald] early on,” he says, adding that they’ve dreamed of doing Sunday in the Park with George together. “I have a whole concept and creative team in mind,” he teases. “But I’ll tell you that off the record.”

They’ve known each other since she was fresh out of college, when Fisher saw her perform as Maria in West Side Story at the Hollywood Bowl. “She just came out and blew the place away. You could feel her future from the back of the amphitheater,” he recalls.

On stage, the chemistry is evident—but it’s their shared work ethic and values off stage that bond them most. “She gets it,” Fisher says. “She works hard, she leads with kindness and she can goof off with the best of them. That’s the dream.”

These days, Fisher’s ambition doesn’t eclipse his grounding. Becoming a husband and father—he married longtime love Ellie during the height of the pandemic in a private, midnight Walt Disney World wedding—reframed everything.

The couple originally planned a destination celebration in Hawaii with 150 guests. “We kept pushing it back and pushing it back, and eventually we just had to reset,” Fisher says. That’s when a friend at Disney stepped in. “He said, ‘Let’s get you married,’ and next thing we knew, we were behind Cinderella’s castle at midnight. No one else there. Just our people.”

The moment was pure magic—and they’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. On June 7, 2022, the couple welcomed a son named Riley William. “That has been my secret superpower,” he says of fatherhood. “I wake up and I’m thinking, did I switch the laundry? Is the diaper bag packed? It made everything else, even the important stuff, feel smaller—and that’s a good thing.”

His voice softens as he talks about his son, Riley. “We have a hard time saying goodbye every day. He’s not even three, but he’s just this tiny old soul. Loves music, loves books, crosses his legs and stares out the window like he’s lived a hundred lives.”

Fisher beams. “He’s my best friend.” He says he always knew he wanted to be a dad—thanks to the example set by his own. “If you met my dad, you’d understand why,” he says. “To me, he embodies success. He went to work every day for his family, came home happy, and we did things together. That made me want this.”

He credits his adoptive mother, Pat Fisher—his grandmother by birth, but mom in every way—for shaping his grounded outlook. “She trained me to treat this career like a business, but also to value real life, real love, real connection,” he says. “That’s the blueprint.” It’s the same mindset that fuels his growing work as a producer.

That foundation was laid early, in Birmingham, Alabama, where Fisher grew up performing at Red Mountain Theatre Company. “We treated it like a job,” he says. “We were trained to show up, to be prepared, to respect the work.” He speaks with deep admiration for the institution, and its former leader Keith Cromwell. “Any kid that came out of Red Mountain knows how to work.”

Fisher also marks his journey in ink. His tattoos include references to Hamilton, Vincent van Gogh and a song he wrote for his mother—and he's already figured out a future nod to Moulin Rouge!. “I’m trying to crystallize moments in life,” he says. “They’re mile markers. I can always go back to them.”

That same thoughtfulness extends to his backstage presence. “I try to be one of the first people to sign in every day. I say goodbye to every single person as they leave. That stuff matters,” he says. At one point during Moulin Rouge!, he even told castmates they had to stop leaving without saying goodnight. “Now they all do. It’s just a little thing, but it changes the energy.”

But the journey hasn’t always been light. Fisher is candid about the mental and physical toll of performing during tough times, especially his second run in Dear Evan Hansen, when he returned to the lead role after Broadway reopened post-COVID shutdown.

“I was unhealthily sick. I had a very severe eating disorder. Anxiety. Depression,” he says. “I’d do the show, and then I’d sleep the entire next day. I lost so much weight. I was in therapy, trying to figure out how to get food down. It was a really hard time.”

What triggered it wasn’t a single moment—it was the accumulation of pandemic fatigue, overwhelming work expectations and personal pressure to keep everything afloat. “Ellie was pregnant. I was producing a movie. Everything was on fire,” he says. “And I was scared. I didn’t know if I could keep going.”

Still, he made it through. “That time taught me to talk about things. To develop a relationship with what’s hurting you so it’s not scary anymore,” he says. “And it sharpened me. It added tools to my belt. I now know I can do anything.”

These days, he’s an advocate for open dialogue around mental health in the industry. “We need to check in with our people. We need to be human. That’s not weakness—it’s strength.” And in the kind of supportive environment Moulin Rouge! has created, he feels that healing reflected in the day-to-day.

With hard-earned clarity, he’s stepping into the next phase of his creative life.

“My dream is that my production company runs without me, and I get to do whatever fills me,” he says. “TV, film, theater, voiceover, video games, books—it’s all storytelling. I love all of it.”

He points to projects like MJ—which he helped develop early on—as the kind of work he wants to be part of. “I want to create things that make theater owners go, ‘I need that here.’ That change things. That matter.”

He’s especially excited by the new generation of Broadway creators and fans. “There’s a hunger for stories that haven’t been told. I want to be in those rooms, helping those voices get heard.”

When asked about his goals looking ahead—after all he’s achieved in his 20s—Fisher doesn’t rattle off awards or dream roles. Sure, he hopes to see his recent acclaimed turn as Bobby Strong in Urinetown transfer to Broadway. But the real dream? He paints a picture instead.

“It’s me on stage, telling a story. And my kid is backstage, sitting on a couch, reading a book. That’s it,” he says. “You’ll know I’ve peaked when I can leave my house with my son, bring him to the theater where I’m working, and he’s just hanging out back there while I’m doing the thing I love.”

He smiles. “That, to me, is success.”