Megan Hilty Reflects on Life After Death Becomes Her, Parenting, and Paddington

For Megan Hilty, a return engagement at Café Carlyle is more than just another concert run, it’s a family tradition. The Broadway favorite has spent years making memories in the intimate venue, from performing while pregnant with both of her children to bringing them along for the ride. With her new residency there beginning tonight, Hilty spoke with TheaterMania about revisiting one of her favorite stages, recovering from the vocal and physical injury that briefly sidelined her during Death Becomes Her, the challenges of balancing parenthood with a Broadway schedule, and why she’s convinced London’s new musical adaptation of Paddington is destined to become a worldwide hit.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How many times have you done the Carlyle now?
I should go back and actually count. This is maybe our sixth time. I’ve been pregnant with both of my kids on that stage. Both kids have spent weeks at a time living there and going to sleep upstairs while we go downstairs. We have this deep family history with this space, and this residency in particular. It’s just what our family does now.

Do you structure your smaller cabaret shows differently than something like your recent Drury Lane show in London?
I kind of do half and half. If you are purchasing this very specific ticket, you’re going to expect certain songs. Smash, 9 to 5, Patsy Cline stuff is always in there. I’m going to be doing “Tell Me Earnest,” where my husband will play Earnest and our music director, Matt Cusson, will play Helen. We did that in London and everybody loved it. My husband and I are debuting a new duet this week; we’re doing “Islands in the Stream.” We’ve always wanted to do it, and it’s a great tie-in with the Dolly [Parton] stuff.

How was the Drury Lane show for you?
Oh, my God. They treated us like royalty. We didn’t want to come home. My parents came and hung out with our kids while we were working. We saw Paddington!

And?
It is the next huge thing. I cannot wait for it to take over the entire world. It’s one of the very few shows that I’ve experienced in my life where I could sit down and completely escape. And the way they did the bear is just so beautiful. The actor doing the voice of Paddington, I want to hear him sing all the time. It’s just very smart storytelling, and the music is excellent. I can’t say enough good things about it.

A year ago, you decided to take a leave of absence from Death Becomes Her to recover from a vocal and physical injury. In retrospect, tell me about that experience, and how are you doing today?
It was terrifying. Just like any professional athlete who goes through an injury that takes you out of the game, it makes you question everything. You really pause and take the time to reset and make sure that you re-enter in a healthy way. I have the greatest team of doctors and vocal therapists around me.

I felt so deeply supported by the producers of Death Becomes Her, who were like, “Do what you need to do and come back when you’re ready.” I’ve never gone through something like this before, but I didn’t expect the level of support from people who stood to lose so much money and were in an equally scary position for a different reason. They really saw this as, “You need to take care of yourself and the longevity of your career.” It is because I had that support that I could go back to the show and finish it. And now I’m back to my concerts and feeling, knock on wood, better than ever.

A lot of people suffer these injuries in silence because admitting that you’re human is looked down on in this industry. Unfortunately, it happens all the time.

I feel like a lot of people don’t realize just how difficult the roles in Death Becomes Her are.
Oh, 100 percent. It’s a totally different beast from anything else that I can think of. It’s funny; I feel like maybe me and Jen did our jobs too well by making it look a little too easy. Maybe. I don’t know. But I can’t stress how incredibly taxing it is to sing and be moving and speaking and running, really, for two-and-a-half hours straight. That level of workload requires 48 hours of downtime so that your vocal cords can actually reset.

I’m not going to speak for other people, but I would push for a Monday and Tuesday off for every singer, especially for these new musicals that are being written. It’s not like playing Dolly in Hello, Dolly! Dolly has a lot to sing, but it’s not like this. It’s not what audiences want now. They want us to be screaming for two-and-a-half hours.

And you’re a parent, too, which is a whole different beast. I didn’t realize how unsuitable this industry was until relatively recently, when I had kids.
Oh, yeah. It’s not built for parents. There’s a level of expectation that is completely unrealistic. Something always has to be sacrificed. By the end of my run, it was like, “I have to go see my kids.” I can’t keep missing anything. There’s a reason why not a lot of people in our business have kids. They’re not building it for us to safely and respectfully have time to care for our children. I will say, once I came back from my leave and I started to take Tuesdays off, it opened up this whole new world with my kids and my husband. We actually had these evenings together.

I imagine that’s partially why so many theater people will go into concertizing, because the schedule is much friendlier to life.
And it’s just fun. We love the Carlyle because we love everybody who works there: the elevator operators, the servers. I cannot wait to see them again. Everybody who works in that building feels like family when you’re there.