Doorways open if you’re Miss America. As an illustration, do you know that the famously hundred-and-two-floor Empire State Constructing truly has a not so well-known hundred-and-third? “There’s this little ladder to stand up there, and it was actually, like, a ledge,” Cassie Donegan, who was topped Miss America in September, mentioned the opposite day. “Nevertheless it was actually cool.”
Behind one other such door: the velvet-seated V.I.P. lounge hidden within the St. James Theatre, in midtown, the place Donegan was sipping a Weight loss program Coke and sitting beside a bespoke Niki Lassiter purse with a poofy pink strap. Or maybe she’d have discovered one other approach in; the star of the night time’s present, Kristin Chenoweth, is a pal from musical-theatre circles. A couple of months in the past, Chenoweth despatched Donegan, who has starred in regional productions of “Legally Blonde” and “Carrie,” a video of herself providing encouragement earlier than a contest. “She’d kill me for sharing this, however she had the flu and was simply dying,” Donegan mentioned. “I watched it on repeat earlier than the Miss New York finals, after which once more earlier than Miss America.”
Chenoweth’s new musical, “The Queen of Versailles,” based mostly on Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary of the identical title, tells the story of Jackie Siegel, a former Mrs. Florida winner who married a time-share magnate and got down to construct the biggest personal house in the US: a fourteen-bed, thirty-bath mansion, in Orlando, Florida, modelled on the Palace of Versailles. (Additionally a part of the design: an statement deck to observe Disney World’s fireworks.) Then the 2008 monetary crash hit. Development halted, and issues veered extra towards “Gray Gardens.” By the top, Siegel’s husband was lambasting his household for leaving the lights on, lest the utility invoice creep larger.
Donegan, who’s twenty-eight, grew up in small-town Virginia, in a household that owned an assortment of native companies—a tobacco farm, a mechanic store, an electrical energy firm. “I bear in mind listening to the impacts of these monetary fluctuations,” she mentioned, of the aughts recession. “However I used to be eleven. I didn’t actually log a whole lot of that.” She doesn’t have Siegel’s residential ambitions. Donegan now lives in Sunnyside, Queens, in a garden-level one-bedroom that she shares with two canine. “I obtained an unbelievable freaking deal,” she mentioned. “And I’ve a leasing workplace, so, if there’s an issue, somebody truly solutions the telephone.”
Cartoon by Frank Cotham
Showtime approached. Donegan, who wore a black gown with a crisscrossed neckline and a black bomber draped over her shoulders, made her strategy to an orchestra seat. Some two hours later, after Chenoweth, in a collection of eye-popping ensembles and animal prints, sang of “American royalty” and “caviar goals,” Donegan rose to hitch the standing ovation. Many of the viewers filed out. Stephen Schwartz, the musical’s composer, and Winnie Holzman, Schwartz’s collaborator on “Depraved,” shook a number of close by fingers.
A number of minutes later, Chenoweth reappeared onstage, in a black Blondie sweatshirt and untied white sparkly sneakers. She rushed to hug Donegan, then gestured apologetically towards her personal throat—vocal relaxation. “No, I get it—you simply ran a marathon,” Donegan mentioned. The 2 whispered their greetings, then scooted over to the set’s faux-marble staircase for a photograph. Chenoweth cheerily waved over the remainder of the solid for a bunch shot, and a handler produced Donegan’s Miss America sash and tiara. She tried to safe the tiara atop her strawberry-blond hair. “I don’t have any pins,” she mentioned with a frown, then shrugged. “I’ll simply steadiness it.” A solid member requested what Donegan had finished for the pageant’s expertise portion. “I sing,” she mentioned, drawing a number of oohs.
On the best way out, as a staffer closed down the merch stand and the foyer bars’ slushy machines quietly hummed, Donegan introduced up the lyric about caviar goals. “So usually we pray and hope and dream for issues,” she mentioned. “Then you definitely get up and also you understand that day that you just’re in the midst of what you hoped and prayed and dreamed for.” She thought-about her personal profession. The aim, nonetheless, was to be on Broadway herself. Within the meantime, issues had been fairly good. “I distinctly bear in mind being in my bed room in center faculty and considering that being a working, skilled actor was so far-off,” she mentioned. “The fact is, I pays my payments simply being an actor, and that’s not a actuality for lots of people.”
The caviar might wait. “I received Miss America in a wardrobe that most likely price lower than a thousand {dollars} in complete,” she mentioned. “You don’t need to be the Queen of Versailles to be the Queen of Versailles, you already know?” ♦
