Interview: Kerry Butler, Laura Bell Bundy, and Marissa Jaret Winokur Are Big Girls Now

When Broadway stars Kerry Butler, Laura Bell Bundy, and Marissa Jaret Winokur first thought of creating their concert show Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now at New World Stages, it began as a lighthearted conversation, then spiraled into an obsession, a mission, and, ultimately, a celebration of friendship, motherhood, and shared history.

In this candid interview, these three Hairspray powerhouses reveal how Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now evolved from a casual idea into a heartfelt, nostalgia-fueled tribute, sharing what it’s like to perform for audiences who have grown up with them, the impact of that iconic show, and the sense of family that bloomed from it.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Who hatched this show idea first?
Kerry Butler: Me and Laura were doing a concert together and we called Marissa and she never called us back.

Laura Bell Bundy: We were doing our makeup and I said, “Oh my god, what if we do a show called Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now?” And we called her to tell her the idea, and this bitch didn’t get the message.

Kerry: We didn’t think she liked it.

Marissa Jaret Winokur: And then a year later, I came up with the best idea: Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now. [laughs] That’s literally what happened. So then, Laura asked if I could sing in something, and I was like, “I don’t want to sing alone.” And she’s like, “Well, we did have this idea.” And then I got, like, fanatically insane.

Laura: She got obsessed with it, which was so funny. I guess a year ago, we reintroduced the idea, and we put it together pretty fast.

Marissa: We had our first show booked in Utah, and we didn’t have a show. We took photos last October, and we had no show.

Kerry: I was like, “Guys, don’t you think we should start working on it?”

Marissa: I think we all had an idea of what the show was, and then we learned so much from our audiences. I do think we were all like, “Yay, we’re doing it for our gay fans, they’re going to be so excited,” and then in Utah and Orlando, I was like, “Oh, this is moms bringing their daughters because they saw Hairspray and now, they want to share it with their teenager.”

What was important for you in putting this show together, and what can audiences expect?
Marissa: Not to be like “We’re good role models,” but we are working moms who are making work for ourselves, and we’re strong women supporting each other. I have a son who is less than interested in anything I do, but if I had a daughter, I’d be like, “Look at those three women who are doing it together.”

Laura: There’s a lot in the title of Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now. It’s our origin story from childhood to how we got into this, our relationship with our moms, and becoming moms ourselves. If you love musical-theater from the early aughts, this show is for you. We sing from everything we’ve done. I mean, Kerry’s done so much, we can’t even cover it. It would be a three-hour show.

What’s your favorite Hairspray memory?
Kerry: There are so many crazy stories. I was the only one who was married at the time, and everybody else in the cast was crazy. I was like, “I’m going to have some clean entertainment. We’re gonna do an around-the-world, and every dressing room is going to be a different theme.” This was when we took the show out of town.

Laura: It was a progressive dinner in the hotel when we were in Seattle.

Kerry: I will say that it turned into not the clean version.

Laura: All I’m going to say is this: God does not count Seattle.

Marissa: During that time, I was in my hotel with the humidifier going so hard that the wallpaper steamed off the walls. And I was like, “This hotel sucks. The wallpaper’s coming off.” And everyone’s like, “I think you’re doing it.”

Laura: When we were doing the second reading of Hairspray, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman took the whole cast to see James Brown at BB King’s. And I wasn’t old enough to get in. I was 19 and you had to be 21. But that was my first memory of realizing who Marc and Scott were going to be in this show.

Kerry: They were like that all the time.

Laura: They were like our aunties. They were so generous. They were a part of our cast. We always had parties at their house.

Kerry: Star-studded parties. Bette Midler.

Laura: Nathan Lane. That was the beginning of like, “Oh, wow, this is a family.” And we became a family. We really are.

Marissa: I don’t know if you guys remember this, but “Good Morning Baltimore” had the most intense choreography in Seattle. No one does it better than Jerry Mitchell. Jerry choreographed it to an inch of its life. I got so sick in Seattle. I was at the hotel one night by myself and Jerry came over and said, “I’ve had an epiphany. You’re just going to sing the song. You’re going to stand there, you’re going to be in a bed, the bed’s going to open, and then you’re going to walk, and the world will be behind you.” Everything became these little, simple formations, and I remember being like, “Shit, this is my ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.'” I learned it in my hotel room, and the next day we put it in.

Hairspray was a hit in a way that feels like a rarity now. Can you sum up what it’s like to be in a show like that?
Laura: It only goes down from there. [laughs] We know we were part of history.

Kerry: Dick Latessa would tell us all the time, “This is special. This is not gonna be your experience with every show.”

Marissa: I remember after opening night in Seattle, Harvey Fierstein saying, ” No matter how we do in New York, what you just heard, they can’t take that away from you.”

Laura: The second I heard that music, in the very first reading we ever did, in a craphole on Second Avenue above a church where the smell of the Indian restaurant below was seeping in, I had a feeling about it. It had everything. It had comedy, it had drag queens, it had an important message, and then you top it all off with this feel-good music and you don’t even know you’re eating your vegetables. You think you’re having cake the whole time.

Marissa: I was like, “I’m never going to do another show like this,” and I haven’t. I left. I moved to California. I did a different life. It took Laura and Kerry and the idea of singing Hairspray music to bring me back to New York. It chokes me up, because all I wanted to do was be on Broadway and do musicals, and then I left because there was never going to be another Tracy Turnblad. I was like, “I’m out until I get to do Mama Rose.” I feel like I’ve regained my childhood creative self. It felt like I was missing a piece of myself, and these women literally brought it back to me.