
From Bangkok to Broadway
Minutes later, she steps onto a Broadway stage, becoming the first Thai woman in history to lead a major production. The weight of it all is not lost on her.
'I genuinely can't believe it,' she says. 'Being able to represent my own country in this way has been nothing short of a dream come true.'
But Myra's story isn't just about being first. It's about opening the door wider, so more voices can walk through it.
From the Bangkok stage to Broadway's bright lights
Myra's path to the spotlight didn't begin in New York but in a shopping mall in Bangkok. At 13, she captivated the kingdom by winning the very first season of Thailand's Got Talent. Such a victory could have turned her into a local celebrity, but she chose not to settle.
While others might've chased red carpets, Myra headed to Berklee College of Music in Boston. She honed her skills, pushed herself and embraced the grind by touring internationally with Miss Saigon, voice acting as Moana in Thai and taking on every opportunity with curiosity.
'I used to be so shy and afraid to speak my mind,'
she admits.
'But every experience since that first stage has helped me grow not just as a performer, but as a person.'
No boxes, no boundaries
As a Southeast-Asian woman entering a historically white industry, Myra has had to navigate a stage that wasn't built with her in mind. She's felt the sting of typecasting. She's heard the subtle (and not-so-subtle) doubts. But she never let those moments define her.
'We're often seen as the 'diversity pick' but we're more than an ethnic quota,'
she says, calmly but firmly.
What she craves isn't tokenism. It's freedom to play roles that aren't bound by race or stereotype. People of Asian descent should be able to portray any role – not just the Asian-specific ones.'
Instead of shrinking herself to fit in, Myra's made it her mission to take up space without apology and to make sure others know they can too.
A career built on quiet discipline
To the audience, Broadway looks glamorous. But behind the velvet curtain is a world of physical endurance and mental strength. Eight shows a week. No excuses. No shortcuts.
'It's quite masochistic, I suppose,' she laughs, half-serious. 'But I actually thrive in that kind of pressure.'
Years of training have sharpened her ability to keep showing up even when she's exhausted, even when doubt creeps in. She relies on discipline, sure. But she also leans into ritual: gym, steam, prayer, sai sin. These small, sacred things tether her to something larger than the industry. They make every performance a full-circle moment.
Choosing joy over perfection
For all her achievements, Myra's greatest act of rebellion might be the simplest: learning to say no. 'I've turned down things that felt scary to walk away from,' she says. 'But doing that made room for the things I truly love.'
She's done chasing the 'next level.' Instead, she follows a sense of alignment and purpose. Lately, that pull is pointing her toward film.
'The process, the medium, everything about it – I just love it,'
she says with a quiet grin.
She's not in a rush. Her story's not a checklist. It's a slow, intentional unfolding.
Wherever she goes, she carries home with her
Myra doesn't hold tightly to places. She's lived in Bangkok, Boston, New York and yet, none of them are quite 'home' in the traditional sense.
Home is where my people are,' she says.
'My family. My friends. That's what grounds me.'
Still, she keeps her roots closely braided into her everyday life. The sai sin in her hair. The prayers whispered before curtain call. The values instilled in her from childhood: humility, gratitude, grace. Those things stay with her, wherever she lands.
At 27, Myra Molloy has already made history. But it's not the headlines that matter most to her but it's how she feels inside.
'For a long time, I tied my self-worth to my career,' she says. 'The moment I let that go, I became so much happier.'
Now, she defines success not by applause, but by joy. By doing the work she loves, with people she respects. By creating space for others and staying open to what's next.
One day, she hopes to write a musical with something about sisterhood, maybe inspired by her younger sister. But she's not in a rush. 'I want to stay open. Curious. Grateful. If you're not having fun, what's the point?'
And if she could go back and whisper something to that shy 13-year-old girl standing under the lights in Bangkok, it would be simple:
'Trust yourself. This is only the beginning.'
At a time when authentic representation on stage feels more important than ever, Myra isn't just breaking barriers but she's smashing them with grace and grit. As she carves out space for herself and others, she redefines what representation and artistry look like. If there's one thing she wants everyone to know, it's to trust your journey, because the possibilities? They're endless and Time Out can't wait to see what she does next.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Drink it up! Daniel Day-Lewis films
The movie of the Broadway musical of Fellini's 8½ is one of only two duds on the Day-Lewis CV. Surrounded by dazzling female actors (Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren), he ends up making heavy weather of Guido, the bewildered auteur caught at a creative impasse. A light touch eludes him: he's no Marcello Mastroianni, that's for sure. John Schlesinger's bisexual love-triangle drama gave Day-Lewis his film debut at the age of 14. He is briefly shown sauntering along a row of parked cars, scratching the paintwork with a broken bottle. The delinquent behaviour, the insouciant look, the south London setting: this could be a teenage snapshot of Johnny from My Beautiful Laundrette. Ten minutes or so of screen time doesn't give Day-Lewis much chance to make an impression as the debonair ex of young Nanou (Imogen Stubbs). He finds her in France, where she has fallen in with a would-be terrorist, but says 'au revoir' shortly after. Still, he looks Delon-level dashing in a raincoat. Like Sunday Bloody Sunday, another hooligan cameo for Day-Lewis. He gets dialogue this time, all of it racist, as he tries to intimidate the young Gandhi, played by Ben Kingsley. Movies in which Day-Lewis played a more prominent role have attracted no shortage of Oscar nominations, but Gandhi is the only one of his to have walked off with the best picture prize. Pauline Kael was one of Day-Lewis's early champions but she argued that he 'stuck out' and 'seemed like a bad actor' in this version of Mutiny on the Bounty. In his big scene, he is furiously reprimanded by Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh. Equally noteworthy is the sight of Day-Lewis sharing the screen for the first time with one of his own acting heroes, Phil Davis. Also among the Bounty's crew is the comic John Sessions: in Gangs of New York, Sessions would play an actor playing Abraham Lincoln, and getting harangued and pelted for his troubles by Day-Lewis. In his second stab at fish-out-of-water comedy, Day-Lewis is an over-zealous Irish travelling dentist given to philosophical musings ('Did we somehow mislay our genetic memory or did God just forget to give us better teeth?') as he brings good brushing technique to Argentina courtesy of the DuBois Foundation for the Development of Dental Consciousness. Tending to priests, peasants and gangsters alike, he roams the land on his motorcycle and sidecar, gets chased by multiple Santa Clauses, falls for a woman on the run from her wedding, and finally declares: 'The world is collapsing! And I have an erection!' Put Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder together on screen and it never works out well for their characters (see also: The Age of Innocence). In Arthur Miller's by-the-book adaptation of his own ageless play about the Salem witch trials, Day-Lewis is the farmer John Proctor, who pays a heavy price for dallying with young Abigail (Ryder). It was through the making of the film, directed by Nicholas Hytner, that Day-Lewis first met Miller's daughter, Rebecca, whom he married at the end of 1996, and with whom he had two of his three children, including Ronan, co-writer and director of Anemone. Training under Barry McGuigan, Day-Lewis boxed twice a day, seven days a week, for nearly three years to prepare to play the IRA soldier who embraces his pugilist roots after serving 14 years in prison. More inflammatory is his rekindled romance with his teenage sweetheart, who happens to be another prisoner's wife, played by Emily Watson. In his third film for Jim Sheridan, Day-Lewis gives a hushed, coiled performance (he doesn't lose his rag until the 85-minute mark). It heralded his first retirement – after this, he didn't make another film for five years – but is not exactly what you'd call going out on a high. Central to the rise of Day-Lewis was the timing of this Merchant-Ivory adaptation of EM Forster's novel, which opened immediately after My Beautiful Laundrette. Hard to imagine a better illustration of his range than the back-to-back sight of the sensually swaggering Johnny in Laundrette and the uptight prig Cecil Vyse in Room. The moment when jilted Cecil stands with his shoe in his hand was all Day-Lewis's idea. 'If you take your shoes off in a situation in which you're vulnerable,' he said, 'you'll feel 10 times more vulnerable.' Spoken like the shoemaker he would eventually become during his first retirement. As Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four who were wrongly convicted and imprisoned for the 1974 IRA pub bombing, Day-Lewis goes from impish troublemaker to broken wreck and finally folk hero. Terrific to see him sharing the screen again with Phil Davis: this time, Davis is a brute putting the screws on him in the interrogation room. And the scene in which Gerry brutally castigates his father, Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite), when the two of them are cooped up together in the same cell, remains blistering. Ultimately, this is a moral work rather than a cinematic one, and there is nothing much for Day-Lewis to play in the final hour but righteousness. Less a coherent movie than a string of eye-catching confrontations, Day-Lewis's second collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson – and the catalyst for his second retirement – casts him as Reynolds Woodcock, a fastidious and imperious 1950s dressmaker. Fun though the standoffs are, especially Reynolds's hilariously disproportionate hissy fit after his asparagus is cooked in butter rather than oil and salt, the movie is little more than an arthouse Devil Wears Prada, with Day-Lewis in Meryl Streep mode and everyone else (bar Lesley Manville, superb as his indomitable sister) running scared. Day-Lewis won his third best actor Oscar for a mesmerising performance as the president trying to pass the 13th amendment, which outlawed slavery, as the civil war rages. Under Steven Spielberg's direction, he brings a lolling looseness to lines that sound as if they've only just occurred to him. A simple scene depicting Lincoln meeting wounded soldiers in hospital is rendered moving by the actor's unforced affability, his warming burr. His charisma makes you understand why the soldiers would get a kick simply from standing in his shadow. Nothing to do with Titanic, the Jack and Rose here are a father and daughter, played by Day-Lewis and Camilla Belle respectively, whose off-the-grid lifestyle is jeopardised when Jack's girlfriend (Catherine Keener) comes to stay, bringing her teenage sons (Paul Dano and Ryan McDonald). Under the direction of his wife, the novelist and film-maker Rebecca Miller, Day-Lewis exudes grumpy charm as the Scottish immigrant whose love for his daughter grows gradually suffocating and even unsavoury. Two years before he and Day-Lewis locked horns spectacularly on screen in There Will Be Blood, Dano comes off badly in their fracas in a treehouse. It was Dano's fine work here that prompted the senior actor to recommend him to Paul Thomas Anderson for that movie. Philip Kaufman's ambitious film of Milan Kundera's novel about the Prague Spring contains a lead performance for which Day-Lewis has expressed regret. Though the script was in English, he learned Czech but still found himself out of his depth as the priapic brain surgeon Tomas: 'It was something to do with language. The idea of speaking English with a Czech accent meant it wasn't coming from anywhere.' Accept that touch of inauthenticity and it's still possible to savour Day-Lewis's wry, carnivorous sexual magnetism, and the pitiful sight of Tomas's spirit being crushed by the political regime and the betrayals it demands. Other pluses: that mane of liquorice-coloured hair, and the actor's tingling rapport with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin. It was Leonardo DiCaprio who coaxed Day-Lewis out of his first retirement during a stroll in Central Park. The young star's reward? To be comprehensively acted off the screen. As bullyboy William Cutting, aka Bill the Butcher, Day-Lewis isn't merely the dominant presence in Martin Scorsese's misshapen, mid-19th-century gangster thriller: he is its sole source of dynamism. In stove-pipe hat, flapping trenchcoat and with an American eagle printed on his glass eye, he looks like the Babadook's sleazy uncle, giving off strong proto-Trumpian energy as he decries 'the foreign hordes defiling' his land. There's also a nice Day-Lewis Cinematic Universe crossover when he strides through a crowd of anti-Lincoln protesters and lobs a knife that hits a portrait of the president he would portray a decade later. He also gets to describe Ireland, his real-life off-screen love, as 'an excrementous isle'. The method actor as matinee idol. Even those who haven't seen Michael Mann's stylish, swoon-worthy take on the James Fenimore Cooper novel will know the lengths to which Day-Lewis went to portray Hawkeye, adoptive son of a Mohican chief. He lived wild for weeks, ate only what he could hunt or forage, learned to load a rifle while running through the forest and built his own canoe. The North Carolina landscapes are ravishing, though they risk being upstaged by the magnificence of the actor's mighty brow and glossy tresses as he darts among the trees in slow-mo. Then there is that emphatic demand to Madeleine Stowe: 'Stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you!' Who could possibly disobey? Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi saw the influence of Clint Eastwood on Day-Lewis's minimalist performance as Johnny, the gay former thug who helps spruce up a London launderette. Director Stephen Frears thought he was more like Marlene Dietrich. The actor described it as 'the first film that I ever passionately wanted to do'. Hence the letter he wrote to Frears ('I know you think I come from a public-school background but I've got very nasty friends') in which he threatened to break the director's legs if he didn't give him the part. It worked. As did his brooding, funny, horny performance. A star was born right there among the suds. The critic Jonathan Romney floated the theory that Newland Archer, the elegant lawyer played by Day-Lewis in Martin Scorsese's rapturous adaptation of Edith Wharton's study of late-19th century New York mores, was a 'soul brother' to Jake La Motta in Raging Bull: 'He simply wears fancier gloves.' There is certainly a seam of cunning and coldness in Day-Lewis's performance, but there is boyish wonder too, especially in the gasping, enchanted laugh he lets slip whenever Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) does something irreverent or iconoclastic. As Archer tries to expedite his marriage to her cousin May (Winona Ryder) in an attempt to quell his feelings for the countess, Day-Lewis strikes and sustains a note of tortured panache. Two contradictory things are true of Jim Sheridan's film about the artist and writer Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy. One: there is no excuse for a disabled actor not to have been cast in the role. And two: Day-Lewis – who won his first Oscar for this – is astonishing in it. The first of three projects with Sheridan, this marked the beginnings of the Daniel Day-Loopy PR machine, as stories abounded of the lengths to which he went to stay authentically in character: never leaving his wheelchair, having to be carried over the cables on set, contorting his body so fiercely that he broke two ribs during filming. The movie hasn't endured as well as it might: it ends on a happy-ever-after with Brown's future-wife Mary Carr, who, it was later alleged by his biographer Georgia Louise Hambleton, isolated and abused him. The comedian Adam Riches once called Day-Lewis 'the greatest actor never to appear in anyone's favourite film'. Paul Thomas Anderson's awe-inspiring character-study-disguised-as-an-epic gives the lie to that quip. Speaking in the corroded rumble of John Huston's Noah Cross from Chinatown (another monstrous devourer of people and land alike), Day-Lewis is extraordinary as Daniel Plainview, a rapacious early-20th century Californian oil prospector. In a performance that can be summed up as long overcast periods interrupted by all hell breaking loose, usually with Paul Dano on the receiving end as the pipsqueak preacher who is Plainview's sole adversary, Day-Lewis doesn't make us like Plainview or even understand his cruelty, but we absolutely believe in him. And, as with all great monster movies, we are eager to see what he breaks next. After nearly three hours in his company, audiences are likely to develop a severe case of Stockholm syndrome.


Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Good Night, Oscar is a Tony Award winner, but nobody this side of the Atlantic will care
Who is Oscar Levant? On myriad levels, this is the question both we and Doug Wright's play, coming to London after a Tony Award-winning run on Broadway, need to ask. Levant, as a minor character here so handily recaps, was a film actor and pianist, most notably in An American in Paris; in addition to this, he was a prized wit and raconteur, famed for his one-liners, just like another Oscar, Wilde. Levant also struggled with serious mental health issues and addiction to prescription pills which he talked about openly, if superficially. Yet we leave this 100-minute play no wiser as to the real man behind this troubled facade. Although we understand that Wright has serious points to make about the shifting morality of what is served up in the name of ratings and entertainment, we cannot help but feel a little bit grubby. The year is 1958 and Oscar (Sean Hayes) has been booked to star on the live late-night NBC chat show hosted by Jack Paar (Ben Rappaport). It's important to note that American pop cultural references abound, which makes the piece a tricky proposition this side of the Atlantic. Come almost start time there's still no sign of the man himself; Wright provides a good 15 minutes of anticipation building before Oscar appears. It transpires that Oscar's wife June (Rosalie Craig) has had him committed to a psychiatric institution but has fraudulently wangled an exeat for him for this recording, believing that the adoration of the public will prove beneficial. For his part, the crafty Paar knows that Oscar's mental instability will lead to firecracker television. Oscar has proved a career-changing role for Hayes, best known for his role as the flamboyant Jack on the long-running sitcom Will and Grace. Hayes won the Tony for Best Actor for his work and, accomplished though Oscar's slurred drawl and twitches are, it's a performance that lacks any sense of interiority. We must wait until right at the end of Lisa Peterson's production to witness Hayes in true virtuoso mode, as he sits down at a Steinway and reveals himself to be a dazzlingly accomplished pianist who blazes through a seven-minute segment of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. At this point, it's easy to think that we are in the Barbican Concert Hall rather than Theatre. All the same, I don't think that theatre awards should be given out for piano playing. Wright affords a similar lack of emotional depth to the stoic June, herself once a promising film actress and Craig, brisk and business-like, does what she can with a limited part. Elsewhere, it's all carelessly unsupervised pots of pills and characters telling each other things they surely already know. I cannot say that I was sorry to bid goodnight to Oscar and his colleagues.


Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- Daily Mail
James Corden reveals he is 'terrified' of starring in Broadway play ART and 'woke up sweating' worrying about his performance
James Corden has revealed he is 'terrified' of starring in hs new Broadway play and has 'woken up sweating' thinking about his performance. The comedian, 46, is starring in the play ART, Yasmina Reza's comedy about friendship, ego and modern art. The 17-week run from Aug-Dec marks return to the stage for Corden, who won a Tony for his performance in One Man, Two Guvnors in 2012. He stars opposite Neil Patrick-Harris and Jumanji's Bobby Cannavale. But James has been suffering with a bout of stage fright as he discussed his fears around performing in the play at the 92Y Talks event in New York on Tuesday. 'I mean why do a play? I am terrified. I am terrified by this entire experience,' he said. 'I have woken up every single morning sweating thinking about this speech I have in the middle of the play. I go to sleep listening to a recording of it. 'You can ask my wife and son it is painful, my nerves for this entire experience. But I could not be excited about doing it. 'I am nervous as I have got this speech in the play. Pretty much every day I wish I was playing one of the other two parts. I cant tell you how much. I dunno. It is killing me man.' James told how he is 'in awe' of his co-stars Neil and Bobby and said he realised he needed to step up his game after their first table read together. 'These two are a joke, they are unbelievable,' he said. 'They are so good. I was blown away about how accomplished and how good they were. I was like 'This might be a mistake. I probably shouldnt be doing this?' Despite his apprhension about the speech he has to give during the play, James sees his nervousness as a good thing. 'It has to be terrifying. It has to be. Isn't that the thrill of it to be completely out of your comfort zone? What a privilege to be sacred and to be nervous,' he said. 'You are only nervous when you care about something. You are only nervous when something matters. Nerves are the greatest privilege you can have going to work. 'I mean how brilliant to feel something and to do something that you care about and matters. It is amazing and that is the reason to do it. 'This is a very important moment in my life. I know it is. I can already feel that. The challenge of it already feels extraordinary.' James, like his character in the play, is in hi mid-40s and has found rehersals have got him thinking about death. There are great moments of honesty in the play. The play is about three guys on the edge,' he said. 'You are in your mid 40s and it turn into like sniper's alley where you realise 'Oh s**t I am going to die. And other people are going to die' and 'Oh my God who am I? F*ck I better buy a painting to show you I might be somebody of merit. Somehow because I am dying with every passing breath and minute.' James has had a successful career on both sides of the pond, having created the hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey and hosted The Late Late Show With James Corden in the US from 2015 to 2023. 'I mean if you could do go back. It is so easy when you are working to forget the very thing that you ever dreamt,' he said. 'I mean if I could go back and tell my 12 year old self that this would be his life right now. His head would explode. 'He would not be able to believe it that he would be in a play on Broadway. Doing this. It would be unfathomable and you have got to hang on to that every single day. 'The last hour of rehearsals today was hard man. I felt really bad as my wife and kids only arrived yesterday and every day they called me I was like "It was amazing. It was great." 'They arrived today and I got back and was like "Dont f*cking talk to me." But that is it. You have to Google Earth yourself every now and then and realise how lucky you are to be doing something like this.'