Interview: Lisa Ann Walter on Joining Heathers: The Musical—a Dream Hiatus From Abbott Elementary

It doesn’t take much to get Lisa Ann Walter excited—and talking. Especially if the topic is how she’s spending her hiatus from ABC’s lauded sitcom Abbott Elementary.

For two months, Walter is playing both hippie guidance counselor Pauline Fleming and the mother of high school student Veronica in the off-Broadway hit Heathers: The Musical. For a gal who grew up listening to West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Godspell on her father’s hi-fi, it’s a dream come true, even if it’s creating a little insomnia.

“I lived in New York for 11 years, and it was during the time of Les Mis and Evita,” Walter says. “I just loved the world so much that to come and be a guest in their house is very meaningful to me. And I’m having a hard time going to sleep because the melodies run through my brain. I wake up in the morning singing them.”

One of five new cast members who joined Heathers at the end of April—including Isabella Esler, John Cardoza, Zan Berube, and Chris Marsh Clark—Walter is the only one of the group not playing a teenager.

“Everybody is of the age that they remember me from The Parent Trap,” says Walter, who played nanny to Lindsay Lohan in the 1998 film comedy. “I call them ‘the kids.’ All of them have these crazy legit voices, and I’m like, ‘Did they come out of the womb taking voice class?’ They’re just uniformly delightful and kind and welcoming and helpful. Because the show is not easy. I like to say, ‘Thank you for your help. I don’t have that much room left in my brain.’”

Walter’s favorite onstage moment in Heathers, an adaptation of the darkly funny 1989 film where popular high schoolers end up dead, comes during Ms. Fleming’s big number, “Shine a Light.” As she leads the students in an inspirational song and dance, she gets the chance to improvise with an audience member standing in for “Steve,” the guy her character has just dumped. During rehearsals, Walter said that she loved “listening to all the kids behind me just bust a gut, because I make them break every time.”

That’s not surprising, since the actor and comedian has roots in stand-up comedy (and a stand-up special, It Was an Accident, coming to Hulu on May 15) that led her to a career in TV and film. But when Walter was starting out, she was drawn to the stage. “I thought if I was lucky, I would be a company member at a great repertory company like the Guthrie,” she says.

In Los Angeles, her stage work was relegated to performances at benefits. “I rewrote the words to Broadway shows and would do medleys about whatever the big news story was,” she says. “Instead of ‘You Gotta Get a Gimmick,’ it was ‘You Gotta Get a Gay Man’ when Prop 8 was trying to get passed. But I never did full shows.”

Walter’s own high school experience, at Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, Maryland, was considerably less fraught than those of the students in Heathers. “I was a theater geek, but I was also a jock and I was also an honor society student,” she says. “I felt like I was a part of all of them.” (Her brains were a boon for the Entertainment Community Fund two years ago when the not-for-profit received the $1 million she won playing Celebrity Jeopardy!)

Adding that she was recently inducted into the school’s alumni Hall of Fame (“I might not have a Tony or an Emmy, but I have that”), Walter is especially proud to have been part of its theater program, and she isn’t the only one from the school who went on to a professional entertainment career.

“My boyfriend from high school is producing Reba McEntire’s television show right now,” Walter relates. “My boyfriend from junior high was a camera operator and DP. We had really great creative kids. We had two guys that were dancers that did all the choreography. One went on to dance with Alvin Ailey. They were out at the time, which was very unusual in the late ’70s.”

Of course, that’s no longer the case, and Walter, who is in Heathers until the show’s June 22 first anniversary, is happy to be involved in a work that embraces acceptance. “Isn’t it a wonderful thing when we have a show that keeps going and keeps giving people delight and joy?” she muses. “It’s really fun to be a part of.”