Sarah Pidgeon on 'Stereophonic', Horror Films, and Broadway Dreams

Elle

22-05-2025

Justin French
Short trench, trousers, Loewe. Earrings, Cartier.
Right before our interview, Sarah Pidgeon headed to her home pour-over setup and hastily threw together some caffeinated sustenance. The results were grainier than she'd prefer. 'It has more…texture than you want a cup of coffee to have,' she says, grimacing a little over her mug.
This might mark the first and only time Pidgeon has rushed through something. Her Broadway debut, in the Tony Awards–sweeping play
(for which she was nominated for Best Featured Actress), was a slow and steady ascent—she auditioned just before the pandemic, after which the show understandably was paused, and then, in 2023, her chance came again.
In the ensuing years, she had grown up a lot, and brought a hard-won depth and maturity to the character of Diana, a member of a '70s band on the rise.
Stereophonic
was 'such a beast of a project,' between its three-hour run time and extensive vocal requirements.
Justin French
Dress, shoes, Bottega Veneta. Earrings, ring, Shay Jewelry.
'Every character I've played, I'm always 'Team Fill-in-the-Blank.' Even if they're extremely flawed, there's a way to justify what they did,' Pidgeon says. 'I did judge Diana a bit for being in this relationship [with her bandmate] and finding it so difficult to advocate for herself. It's like, 'Just get out, leave him,' but it's so much more complicated than that. She's in a different time, and she's extremely dependent on him. He introduced her to music, he helped her write all of her first songs, and now she's starting to have a lot of agency as a songwriter by herself.'
'Motorcycles actually scare me a lot more than horror movies do.'
Pidgeon has always been a theater kid. She studied at Interlochen, the famed arts camp and academy in Michigan, where 'the cutest guy could be the oboe player. It was like, 'Oh, he is really good at oboe, though,'' she says, adopting a lovelorn-tween lilt. She then headed to Carnegie Mellon (alma mater of Billy Porter) before landing roles on
The Wilds
and
Tiny Beautiful Things
.
Justin French
Short trench, trousers, Loewe. Earrings, Cartier.
Next up for Pidgeon is a trifecta of big- and small-screen roles. This summer, you can catch her in the sequel to
I Know What You Did Last Summer
. The original came out when she was only a year old, but she's nevertheless a fan of the franchise (and of horror in general—as a kid, she watched the
Saw
series 'night after night,' she says, with her dog sitting beside her). In the hands of director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the genius behind
Pidgeon will also appear in the motorcycle movie
Born to Lose
, which she filmed in Paducah, Kentucky, immediately after concluding her
Stereophonic
run. ('Motorcycles actually scare me a lot more than horror movies do,' she notes.) And after our interview, the news broke that she would be playing
American Love Stor
y series for FX.
But her heart still resides in the glow of the footlights. She'd love to do a Chekhov play or a one-woman show. And as far as movies go, 'I'd also be down to do a real period piece,' she says, adding jokingly, 'I think it'd be fun to, I don't know, carry buckets of milk around a pasture.' Knowing Pidgeon, she'd find a way to make that utterly compelling.
Hair by
Sami Knight for Rehab
; makeup by Alexandra French at Forward Artists; manicure by Jolene Brodeur at The Wall Group; produced by Anthony Federici at Petty Cash Production; photographed at Malibu Creek Ranch.
A version of this story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of ELLE.
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