In the alley outside Broadway’s Ambassador Theatre — home for 23 years now to the musical Chicago — there’s an unofficial “wall of fame.” Adorning the white bricks are the names of all the actors who’ve played the lead roles in the show, a group that includes a slew of Broadway legends, but also quite a few unexpected show people.
There are pop artists like Brandy, Usher and Ashlee Simpson, and actors known better for the screen than the stage, like Pamela Anderson, Melanie Griffith and Sofia Vergara. And then there’s a different sort of celebrity altogether: seven Chicago alumni best known from the world of reality television. Soon, a new name will join them under the list of actresses who’ve played Roxie Hart: Reece Weaver, the breakout star of Netflix’s America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Weaver is the latest example of an approach to casting that Chicago’s producer team has excelled at perhaps better than any other on the Great White Way, one which has surely contributed significantly to Chicago’s standing as the longest-running current show on Broadway, and the longest-running American musical, period: “put-in” a star from outside the musical theater world; prove said star can hold their own alongside actual Broadway people; and hopefully, watch ticket sales soar.
In recent years, Chicago has taken that mandate one step further with reality stars, mainly “Bravo-lebrities,” along with RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Jinkx Monsoon (as Matron “Mama” Morton), The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Whitney Leavitt (whose casting as Roxie yielded the highest grosses the show has seen), and, now, Weaver representing Netflix.
The practice has its roots in the mid-90s, when Barry Weissler (Chicago’s lead producer with his wife Fran) was working on the revival of Grease and started to realize the potential benefit of casting new faces with established brands (like Brooke Shields, John Stamos and Rosie O’Donnell) in the show. “I think Barry started to realize you can bring in someone that’s at the top of pop culture, or in the cultural zeitgeist, and that can bring people to purchase a ticket — and then they discover all this other Broadway talent surrounding them,” says Brett England, now Weissler’s associate producer on Chicago.
Chicago — John Kander and Fred Ebb’s now-iconic musical about two “merry murderesses” who get their 15 minutes of fame in Jazz Age Chicago — was an even more natural fit for celebrity casting, particularly for reality stars. “The show is structured as a vaudeville, and it’s about the cult of celebrity,” says England. “We’re satirizing what celebrity is. So when these celebrities are willing to play with that, it can work.”
As England points out, most reality stars did not plan to become only that; Vanderpump Rules’ Ariana Madix, for instance, studied musical theater in college, and went on to become a Roxie (she’s now playing Connie Francis in another Broadway hit, the Bobby Darin bio-musical Just in Time).
Weaver, likewise, attended a prestigious performing arts high school, where she was classically trained in various genres of dance, including musical theater, and earned her bachelor’s degree in dance from the University of Alabama. And while cheer may seem a world away from the Bob Fosse-style choreography that defines the current production of Chicago, Weaver says she was lucky to have various teachers throughout her training years schooled in the style.
Weaver as Roxie Hart in Chicago (photo credit: Jeremy Daniel)
“I love me some Fosse,” she tells Billboard (the current choreography is by Ann Reinking in the style of Fosse). “Performing in front of 80,000-plus fans compared to, you know, 700-plus people in the audience is different. It’s more of a contained energy. But still, the precision, the intensity and the integrity behind every movement is the same.”
While a huge built-in fan base certainly helps, it isn’t enough to get a reality star cast in Chicago. “You’re looking for some sort of star quality, right?” England says. “And then there has to be some grit and dedication that’s underneath it.” Weaver, he notes, “was on a football field in the middle of a stadium, and she knew how to perform to that big crowd. Cheering is all about steps and basics and getting choreography down. So there are fundamentals that you’re looking for, and then you’re just trying to pull them out and make them fit within a Broadway sort of blueprint.”
While Weaver’s dance skills were certainly up to par, it turned out that she had already decided to take voice lessons at the top of 2026, she says, before Broadway was even on her radar. But it’s also not unusual for a celebrity to have an initial session with the Chicago team, then put in significant behind-the-scenes work before being officially cast; as Weissler notes fondly, Anderson did so for “at least seven years before we hired her.” Once someone is hired, they’re given at least four dedicated weeks to rehearse.
That said, there’s a reason reality stars have mostly played the role of Roxie in particular. “When the show was created, [the role] was created for Gwen Verdon, an aging Broadway star who didn’t have the [vocal] range she had before,” England notes. “So Roxie is written in a way that can support a performer who might be a little bit new, still finding their footing. And dramaturgically, Roxie isn’t a star, right? She wants to be the star. So the role is built to sort of protect that — and I think that’s why it resonates with so many people who come from [the reality] world.”
Weissler calls Weaver “one of the hardest workers we’ve ever had” — which was certainly evident at a recent Chicago performance, where she executed the Fosse-influenced choreography with precision, clarity and style, but also gamely embraced the physical comedy and still formidable amount of singing required of her role. (In the meta turn England alludes to, lines referring to Roxie as “America’s sweetheart” reliably got knowing laughs from the audience.)
As England and Weissler see it, Weaver (whose limited run in the show is through Oct. 18) is the latest success in a casting approach that’s still expanding. Dancing With the Stars contestants, England notes, are more and more commonly coming to the competition with actual dance backgrounds and could thus be of interest; people from the Bollywood or K-pop worlds are also intriguing.
At a time when it’s harder than ever for even classic Broadway shows to stay open — and even harder to become profitable — Chicago’s approach is not one-size-fits-all, but certainly one worth some study.
“We’re a commercial business, right? We can’t pretend otherwise,” England says. “Playing in [this] space doesn’t have to mean degrading the art form in any way. You have a whole company of performers showcasing the highest form of this art to [audiences] as well. I just think it’s about finding that balance.”
