Don’t get your hopes up about ever seeing Keala Settle reprising her role as Lettie Lutz (aka the Bearded Lady) in the Broadway adaptation of The Greatest Showman.
While the stage version of the hit movie musical is indeed in the works, Keala confirmed to the eleven podcast that there’s “no way in hell” she’d sign on for the musical.
Keala opened up about what it was like filming her “This Is Me” scene for the movie and why that experience is stopping her from considering a return to Broadway as Lettie.
“It was a two-digit hour day for filming in the ring. I had seven people on me. My dress was 25 pounds,” Keala said. “I had a corset on, bound by a corset underneath. I was put into a dress which was tightened back as well. I was double-bound. I had boots that had no protective bottoms so, to this day, I have problems with the balls of my feet because of the dancing we kept doing over and over again. I couldn’t sit down unless I had a specific chair, and people had to lift my dress and tell me to back up basically like a lorry doing ‘beep, beep, beep.’ ‘Yep, you’ve hit it, go on!’”
She continued, “They had to take my shoes off every take so I could put Uggs on. And on top of it, there was a person with a glue pen that would keep applying alcohol to my wig and my facial hair because it kept sweating off. The hair and the makeup people were there because they were tagging each other and the beard was attached to the wig. I had a fan person there and I had someone holding a drink of water for me.
“So, that’s just filming. If you think I’m going to do that eight shows every week, sod off matey! There’s no way in hell I’m doing that. Now if they’ve got an easier way to do it… bring it on! Otherwise, naaa!” Keala concluded.
