The Lost Boys Tony Nominee Shoshana Bean on Reclaiming Her Wild Side

The Lost Boys has earned a staggering 12 Tony nominations, including for Best Musical. The rock-infused blockbuster features Broadway titan Shoshana Bean, who has scored her third Tony nomination for her performance as single mother Lucy Emerson.

Speaking with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek, Bean says, “This one's next-level special because of how deeply in love with this entire show, team, cast and process I am. It has been a singular experience that I didn't think that I would be lucky enough to have again in this lifetime.” Bean’s devotion to the project helped sustain her during The Lost Boys’ preview period. “It's been wildly vulnerable to try new things every night in front of this audience," she says of those early performances. "The hardest, most critical audiences in the world are here in New York. But when you're doing that with a team like this—we've called this entire process a trust fall. I'll try anything because I'm surrounded by these people.”

The Lost Boys is based on Joel Schumacher's 1987 vampire flick, which has attracted a cult following since its initial release. “It's good that the movie wasn't a huge box office smash. It reminds me of Hairspray in that way. Hairspray worked because it was like an underground cult classic that enough people knew and enough people didn't. I think there's a lot of similarities between these two projects, not just based on a movie, but timing, when the city and the world needs what we have to offer,” says Bean, referring to her debut in the original Broadway cast of Hairspray.

Reflecting on the ways in which she relates to the character of Lucy, Bean says she identitifies with “being at a certain point in your life and looking back; seeing where you're at, seeing where you came from and looking at the pieces of yourself you've lost along the way. At this stage of my life, I'm really trying to reclaim that ferocity of that twenty-something that moved here and had nothing to lose and everything to prove. In 'Wild,' my favorite song in the show, [Lucy] says, 'Before I learned to be afraid.' And I think that's where I'm at in my life: Where have I been afraid to take up space? Where have I apologized for parts of myself? Where did my wild ferocity go? I think a lot of people relate to her in that way.”

So what would that ferocious twenty-something say to Bean at this juncture in her career? “‘Why did it take so long?’ That is 100% what she would say,” jokes Bean. “But I think what would blow her mind is that she didn't need to be anybody other than who she was and she navigated trying to be what she thought people wanted from her. The secret sauce was that she was herself all along and that is the thing that I try to shake into every young person that I meet, and every person who wants to be in this business. There's no way to impart that wisdom. They're going to have to live their way through it, but it is what I try to shout from the mountaintops: ‘Who you are is exactly what we need. It's perfectly enough. It is the magic.'”

Watch the full interview below!

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