Kuhoo Verma on Joining Heathers The Musical and Always Screaming the Truth

The first thing you notice about Kuhoo Verma’s career as a performer is the range. Having made her stage breakthrough with the boisterous Bollywood musical Monsoon Wedding, she is best known to New York audiences for her standout performance in Dave Malloy’s moody a cappella musical Octet. Since then, among other roles, she’s played Philia in the Berkeley Repertory Theatre production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and performed the lead role in the contemporary opera Les Larmes d'Eugénie in Venice. (She also does a lethal Whitney Houston rendition.) All this on top of a screen acting career that includes Kumail Nanjiani's The Big Sick and a starring role in the comedy Plan B.

But the diversity of her CV belies a single-minded focus on locating the truth and integrity of each and every performance. On December 11 she took over the role of Veronica Sawyer in Heathers The Musical off-Broadway. She spoke to Broadway.com while still in her final days of rehearsals, clearly gearing up to attack the role with her usual passion and gusto.

How has your time with Heathers been so far?
I really wish I had drama to tell you. I wish I could say, "This person's a f**king b*tch and they're crazy."

You could say it anyway.
Yeah, I could spread some lies. Unfortunately, it's extremely kind, really caring, really sweet—and it's through the lens of just, can we make a killer show? It's really gratifying. I haven't done something like this ever. So much of my work has been originating things, building things, collaborating with the creators. That's been the majority of my theatrical career. Replacing is completely new to me and it's really, really wonderful to be able to walk into something that you just know is good. 

What's your history with the musical? 
I remember having all these wonderful singers in my school singing songs like “Dead Girl Walking” or “Seventeen.” I had heard of the music, but I didn't know the show at all, and it felt fairly inaccessible to me as a performer. I was like, well, that's something that I would never do. My friend was like, “Have you looked at these auditions? You should really go after this.” I was like, no, that’s not my kind of thing. She’s like, “You’ve got to stop saying that.”

Let's explore "not my kind of thing." Your career is so diverse. I’m surprised you would think anything would be off-limits to you.
[Laughs] I've been thinking about that a lot recently. It feels like everything I do is a side quest because it's so unlike anything that I've done before. I think that's just the trend. The way that I describe it is I really feel like a chameleon.

I did have “chameleonic” here in my notes.
I feel like whatever genre it is, whatever medium it is, it kind of doesn't matter. As long as the story hits true and I feel good about the material, I will rise to the occasion of learning the new skillset that I need to learn in order to make this thing feel authentic and to tell the story. For me, the greatest pleasure is knowing that it's good and knowing that it works and that you can see it night after night and have a fantastic time.

It sounds like your range as a performer has a lot to do with the musical ambiance of your home growing up. What were you listening to?
My dad was playing a lot of different kinds of music. A.R. Rahman, the most famous composer in India—he's fusion, a lot of different genres. I was doing a lot of choir. I was listening to art songs. I was listening to Sigur Rós, the Icelandic band. Imogen Heap. And then when it came to true vocalists, there was a lot of Whitney [Houston], there was a lot of Mariah [Carey], and then in my college years, a lot of gospel music. I listened to so many different types of vocalism.

There's a YouTube clip—you must have been 17—singing Etta James' "At Last." You won first prize and got a $200 Applebee's voucher?
I have no memory of there being a prize. But I was very pleased wearing a sequin dress and thinking I was hot shit. I was so young, and I really did take myself so seriously. Like, what do you understand about this song that people sing at weddings? It's so crazy. 

How did you realize your voice was such a powerful instrument? Or were you singing since before you could remember?
Yeah, I was just very loud and singing all the time. I think it started with screaming, to be honest with you. When I was in elementary school, they knew me as the screamer. They would be like, “Can you please scream?” They thought it was so funny that I would scream in the playground so loud and high-pitched that it would sound like it was like a whistle or a bell or something. 

One of my six-month-old daughters is definitely practicing at being a soprano.
Totally. Singing is not singing. Singing is exhalation. You breathe in and then when you breathe out, there's noise—that's singing. It’s about feeling the diaphragm, feeling the breath, feeling the power that you can hold. Particularly as a woman, or any person that's oppressed in society, feeling that you can make a big sound, you can make resonance. It is so empowering to fill a room with sound.

Did you always know this is what you wanted to do?
I was never like, I want to be on Broadway. It's not about, I want to be in a movie. I want to be able to say the truth. When a song came along that felt truthful, I needed to sing it. Or when a story came along that I felt needed to be told, I had to be the one to say it.

How are you finding Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s score for Heathers? It’s very different from what New York audiences have seen you do previously.
It’s visceral. It’s geared toward a dramatic catharsis. You feel it in your body when the guitars go or when the drums go. You feel this godliness entering. You are not allowed to find this high school story infantile. The music demands you to understand the Grecian levels of devastation that's happening. The real stakes of death and murder.

There's no condescension in the music. 
Absolutely. I have great respect for people that are younger and what they're going through.

Does that help you connect with the character of Veronica?
The nectar of power of attention is so strong. Of course she's going to get lost in it. The biggest fear is—you hear it in the lyrics—dying alone. To be seen, to be included, to be looked at is always the goal. 

You mentioned this is your first time being a replacement actor. How do you approach that? Do you take notes from Lorna Courtney's performance? Or do you try to treat it as a fresh slate?
I've been chatting with Andrew [Barth] Feldman a lot about what it means to replace or what it means to step in. He was like, "Don't out of spite watch something that works and be like, well, I want to be different." But it’s also about making it my own and making it authentic. I'm treating this as if it was a workshop. What would it look like for me as a person to say this for the very first time? I think that’s important to do. Veronica drives this show in a way that often female leads don't get to. And I really see it as my responsibility to make sure that I ground her, in a way. 

You made a pact with yourself some years ago—as an actress born in New Delhi—to not portray characters that were specifically written as Indian. How has that been for you?
Wonderful. I do make exceptions—because authenticity will trump everything always for me. If I feel a truth in it, I will do it. 

Is there another musical role you hope to play one day?
Honestly, I've been thinking about Maybe Happy Ending a lot. I've seen it several times. I was like, damn, this is just the most exquisite role. I love it so much. I also really want to originate. I've been doing so many of these workshops. I really hope that one day I get to share some of this beautiful work that these composers have created. I really do. I'm ready to swallow the world more. I want to be working all the time because I know that the things that gravitate toward me, the things that finally click in for me, are always good for me. I'll make things work because it's meant to be. It's an appointment with destiny.

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