Madeline Brewer’s Broadway Dream Has Come True With BECKY SHAW, And She’s Ready for Gen Z’s Take

14 years after graduating musical theatre school, Madeline Brewer is ready for Broadway. 

Theatrely sat down with Brewer, who has been seen on stage in the West End’s Cabaret as Sally Bowles and Off-Broadway as Audrey in Little Shop Of Horrors and on screen in The Handmaid’s Tale and Orange is the New Black, on the night of her first preview of Becky Shaw at the Hayes Theatre. She was battling a cold, but excited to bring the play to a sold-out house. 

Becky Shaw, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2009, is a dark comedy about a blind date gone off the rails. We talked about how it feels to make her Broadway debut — almost exactly 14 years after graduating musical theatre school — her love of her character Becky, and how she can’t wait for Gen Z’s take on the play.  

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Besides the cold, how's it going?

It's going really well. It's great. We're so excited to have a full, we have like, a sold out show tonight, I'm pretty sure. First preview tonight, in a mere two hours and 12 minutes. I’m just really excited. We’ve been working hard, you know, previews at night and like, rehearsal during the day and getting sick (laughs).

How does it feel, Broadway debut! What’s been running through your head?

I feel like it hasn't hit me yet quite yet just because we haven't done it with a full house. I think tonight is going to be a really, really special moment. I'm trying to just stay focused on the doing of the work right now and of staying focused on Becky herself. And then, you know, I'll get all excited and happy for Maddie later today. For right now, it's Becky's moment. I’ve got to stay in Becky world. Maddie will have her time. Maddie we'll definitely have her time when I see my husband after the show and I probably burst into tears. 

I love it. Tell me how, how did you kind of get involved with this project? What was the process like?

I have been a fan of Trip Cullman for many years and, I've been, you know familiar with Second Stage. The last show I saw here was Appropriate, which I just loved quite a few years ago. I’m very much a fan of second stage and of championing these like brilliant living playwrights and giving them a second stage. 

But I have a really great agent. While I was on stage at the Minetta Lane Theater doing The Disappear, he was putting the wheels in motion for what would be my Broadway debut. We've been talking about it for years. My agent's name is Kevin, and Kevin has very much known that this is something I want to do. I wanna be on Broadway. This is what I went to school for. So we've been looking for the right thing. Becky is a character that's like right up my street. She's a bit ambiguous and a little bit mysterious, but also brings a levity and a tenderness, I think, that is is something I like to bring to many of the characters that I play. I just am absolutely madly in love with her. I just think that she's the best. Not everybody feels that way, but I do.

Do you think that it was particularly Becky that drew you to this play?

This play is so well-written. Gina Gionfriddo is a wordsmith. It’s biting, it's sharp, it’s quick, it’s witty. There's a lot of heart there and there's a lotta danger. There's some eggshells we're treading upon in doing this play in 2026. But I think that she’s written characters that are not always very likable, which as an actor, I love. I love having to find the thing I like about them. I did not like Becky when I write on the page, but the more time I spend with her, the more I see her heart and I see how much she's trying, and failing, and can't seem to get out from under herself. It’s something I think everybody can relate to is that she does it in a very different way, but that just that feeling of like, “God, when am I gonna catch a fricking break?” And “when are, when are the tides gonna turn in my way?” But she's relentlessly optimistic. She reminds me of my character Janine in The Handmaid's Tale in that way, in that way of “you are not going to beat me down, for better or for worse.” For Becky, though, there's a few moments there where I'm like, “girl, it's time to take it. The cards have been dealt, and it's time to take your hand and go.” 

You mentioned doing this in 2026, there's a lot to consider. I'm curious what kind of conversations have been happening in the rehearsal room about the relevance of this play today.

Without giving too much away about it, there are elements of the show that I feel like when it was written in 2008, the language was more acceptable. And then we've gone through this period of almost a pendulum swing, where it's like language becoming very, for lack of a better word, policed. And it should be, and there are some things that we've learned from that. There’s been a lot of takeaways, like these are things that are okay to say, these are things that hurtful to say. But I think this language in this time and place, I think [this play] allows us to examine how far we've come. For Becky, specifically, I think that while she's not saying the right things, her intention is to examine why she is the way that she is, which is something that I think we all could be doing. She holds certain ideas in her head based on things that have happened to her and she examines them and wants to understand “why do I hold this prejudice? Why do I hold this idea of myself or someone else? Let me pull back the layers and see why I've come to this decision,” which I think is a really noble thing to be doing. When she says it out loud, it's horrifying. It's shocking. And it's a little bit like, “we're supposed to root for this person?” 

You mentioned earlier you were a huge fan of Trip as a director. I’d love to hear what it's been like working together.

It’s been great. I feel like in a lot of ways, Trip and I speak the same language, but he's also so collaborative. He's really open to actors' ideas and also their impulses and he knows what he wants and he knows when he sees something he doesn't. But I like that. I like decisiveness. I also like play. I like trying things out and seeing what works and what doesn't, and he's very open to that.  

When young people come to see the show, what are you hoping they might take away from it?

My biggest hope is that people walk away from the show engaged in conversation. Who did you like? Who were you rooting for, and why? I feel like also Gen Z is so good at this, I mean, they are the ones who've, in a lot of ways, led the charge … They're just so much more evolved than a lot of Millennials and Gen X and Boomers, especially. I would really love to hear a Gen Z's take on this show, actually. They might find it utterly horrifying, and they also might find it really fun to just sit there and watch people be terrible and get to judge them. My main goal of this show is I really want people to go away speaking to each other, talking about what they've witnessed, talking about the characters that they've spent two hours with. Really just going out for a drink or a coffee or an ice cream cone, and having a chat.

I don't want to jump the gun too much on Maddie brain versus Becky brain, but, you know, Broadway debut, huge exciting moment. When you look back on this whole journey in five, 10, 20 years, what do you most hope that you'll remember?

Oh. Oh, I don't know. I was just reflecting today that I graduated from musical theater school almost 14 years ago. 15 years, oh my gosh, is it 15 years? No, that can't be right. What year is it? 2026. 2026, wow, I had to think about that. I graduated in 2012, that's 14 years. 14 years this May, so while we're doing the show, I graduated from theater school. And I mean, I had no idea what my career would hold for me, what my life would hold from me. I've kind of been reflecting on Maddie in that space of time. There were years where I thought, “Oh God, it's never gonna happen. I'm never gonna make it. I'm not gonna be on Broadway. It's never going to be my time.” Just not true. I had no idea. It's happening all in its time. I've said that before, and it can sound really trite, but it’s true: this is happening as it was meant to. Becky is a role I'm so proud of. This is a team and a cast and crew I'm so honored to be a part of and to work alongside these people and these. The chips fall, and I'm really, really happy with where my chips have.

14 years. That's amazing!

I was a whippersnapper. Like actually, I was a 20 year old child. 

You're making me feel better staring down graduation in May.

What a beautiful time in your life. What a magnificent, promising moment. And things are gonna go weird. And like, you're gonna have some times that you're like, what the hell? What the hell is this? Everything happens in its time.

That's good to hear. Okay, my last question for you, on a day off on, is there anything else opening up this spring that you're looking forward to seeing?

I really wanna see, even though I'm not gonna be able to, I really want to see Antigone, a play I read in high school, by Anna Ziegler at The Public. I really wanted to see that. I'd really like to see Fear of Thirteen, because also my Orange is The New Black friend, Joel Marsh Garland, is in that. It's a pretty packed season. I want to see Titanique, which I'm probably not going to be able to see either, but, Leighton Williams is in it and he did Cabaret as well as the Emcee not too long after I did it. And so that's cool. We've already connected and been like, we're gonna see each other. It’s just such  such an honor to feel like I'm sitting at the lunch table. Like I am a part of the Broadway community. It's so exciting! It's always been one of my favorite things in the world, and now I get to be a part of it. Oh, Proof! I really want to see. Kara Young is amazing.