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Forbes
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Meet Broadway's Betty Boop, Jasmine Amy Rogers
Jasmine Amy Rogers plays Betty Boop in BOOP! The Musical, now on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre Jasmine Amy Rogers will never forget where she was when she learned that she was offered the role of Betty Boop in BOOP! The Musical. It was the summer of 2023 and she had just left her apartment to get on the six train to take a class at Barry's Bootcamp. 'I was attempting to keep myself busy and was going to try this class for the first time,' says Rogers, who got the call from all three of her agents about the show that would run in Chicago before heading to Broadway. 'They always get on a four-way call. And they were saying, 'you're gonna play Boop.' They were proud of me, and so excited,' says Rogers. They told her to keep the news under wraps. 'The only person I could call was my mother,' she says. 'I remember it being a gloomy, warm, rainy day, but I was just over the moon and it was the best day ever.' The road to playing Betty Boop had been challenging for Rogers. The musical about the strong and sultry iconic comic book character who debuted in 1930 had a dream creative team attached. That included director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell, composer David Foster, lyricist Susan Birkenhead and book writer Bob Martin. For Rogers, who was in her early twenties, playing the title role was a lot. A musical theater standout, Rogers had already worked with Mitchell in the musical Becoming Nancy. But until that point, BOOP! eluded her. She had auditioned for the role about seven times yet couldn't land it. 'It was clear Jerry and DB Bonds, our associate director, wanted me. But I had to prove to them that I could handle it,' says Rogers. 'I believe it was about inhabiting myself. I was lacking the confidence needed to play the role and carry the show.' During one work session with Bonds he told her, "You have to go in there and show them what you are doing is worthy.' Looking back, Rogers sees that they knew she was capable of playing Betty Boop before she believed in herself. 'It was basically them trying to convince me that I really wanted this. I had to own it,' she says. 'And when I finally did, that is when I got the role.' But Rogers got to own the role and more. A tap-dancing triple threat, she has a voice as smooth as honey and a belt that brings down the house. She creates a layered Betty Boop that is vulnerable and sweet, yet very powerful and smart. The company also includes Faith Prince, Ainsley Melham, Erich Bergen, Stephen DeRosa, Anastacia McCleskey, Angelica Hale, Phillip Huber, and Aubie Merrylees. 'I love how full of life and how caring Betty is. She is so smart and vivacious,' says Rogers. She is also drawn to Betty's ability to be so nurturing. "Throughout the story, she goes on a journey to find something that she feels is missing in her life. But along the way, she makes sure to stop and take care of people around her,' she says. 'She never sees this as a burden or roadblock. She is willing to give so much of herself to the people around her. Betty views the world in such a beautiful way, it really inspires me to live my own life just a little bit happier and with more optimism.' A passion for performing was in Rogers' DNA. She remembers her late father singing jazz tunes when she was a little girl while her mother adored show tunes. 'My father loved to sing jazz music. He would make up his own songs that felt like their own standards,and he always wanted me to sing,' she says. "My mother was a big musical theater girl who loved Wicked and Rent. And those were my two favorite musicals.' Rogers begged her mother to let her audition for their community theater production of Peter Pan at Milford Performing Arts Center in Milford, Massachusetts, where she was living at the time. (She also grew up in Richmond, Texas, outside Houston.) Playing homage to Wicked, she sang 'Popular' and was cast in the ensemble playing a member of Tiger Lily's tribe. 'Instead of being Native Americans, we were hippies,' says Rogers. She vividly remembers her mother getting the call that they wanted her seven-year-old self for the show. 'I was so excited, I ran around the house, losing my mind,' says Rogers. 'And ever since, I've been hooked.' Throughout the years Rogers continued to do theater, and in her senior year of high school, Rogers was cast as the Witch in Into The Woods. The part won her the Tommy Tune award, given to students who excel in theater in the greater Houston area. That also gave her the opportunity to participate Jimmy Awards, which celebrates the best musical theater talent from around the nation. Rogers made it to the finals. 'When I won the Tommy Tune Award I was so shocked. I was so sure that another girl, who I'm still friends with and was amazing, was going to win,' she says. But after that accolade and the Jimmy Awards she knew that this was her path. Rogers was accepted into the Manhattan School of Music, a conservatory in New York City, to study musical theater. After two years, a professional career beckoned. She was cast in the musical Becoming Nancy, directed by Jerry Mitchell, who would later cast her in BOOP!. 'That is when things really began for me,' says Rogers, who played Gretchen Wieners in the first national tour of Mean Girls. (From left) Stephen DeRosa (Grampy), Jasmine Amy Rogers (Betty Boop), Phillip Huber (Pudgy) As much as she always longed for it, she didn't know if playing a title role like Betty Boop would actually be within her reach. 'When I was little, I wondered if one day I would get to be Wendy in Peter Pan, or Cinderella in Cinderella,' says Rogers. 'And here I am doing that. It was always a dream of mine, and the fact that I'm here doing it is really special.' Rogers hopes people feel that sense of joy that she feels at each performance. 'This show is joy personified. And I hope that we are bringing joy to people in a time where joy feels very sparse sometimes,' she says. 'And I hope people walk away feeling uplifted, loved, ready to love and with a smile on their face.' The cast of BOOP! The Musical Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Boop!' Broadway Review: First Barbie, Now Betty Gets Dragged Into the 21 Century
You've won 16 Grammy Awards and now want to write your first Broadway musical. What source material do you pick? There are so many great novels, movies, straight plays and TV shows out there to choose from. David Foster, the composer of such hit songs as 'I Will Always Love You' and 'The Power of Love,' chose a cartoon character born in the Great Depression. You might remember Betty Boop if you're really old. She's the curvaceous icon from the 1930s that gave little boys boners before they knew what sex was all about. 'Boop!' is the new musical by Foster that opened Monday at the Broadhurst Theatre. It's 'boop-oop-a-doop' for a show that needs a good spritz of Pooph. If you're too young to know about Betty Boop, you will have seen movies that tell this basic story much better. In 'Barbie,' the Barbie and Ken dolls are transported to the real world where she becomes a feminist and he becomes a male chauvinistic pig. In 'Pleasantville,' a 'Father Knows Best' family is transported to the real world when they discover sex. In 'The Brady Bunch Movie,' the famous TV family walks out the front door to be transported into the real world of violence and corruption. When Betty Boop leaves her 1930s cartoon world in 'Boop!,' she's transported (don't ask how) to a Comic Con convention in New York City where she discovers … color. She also discovers some of the ugliest costumes, by Gregg Barnes, that have ever graced a Broadway stage. After singing 'In Color,' Betty makes friends and falls in love immediately with a man (Ainsley Melham, being oddly remote) not in comic book drag. Betty greases her way into the future, as well as the real world, as if she had just bathed in Vaseline. There's no conflict. She just spreads her joy to a city that appears to be doing fine without her. Foster and lyricist Susan Birkenhead load 'Boop!' with so many anthems they appear to be auditioning for some new 'I Love NY' ad campaign. As for Foster's tunes, you will leave the Broadhurst humming them, because you've heard them all before, whether it is caterwauling gospel or anemic jazz or the ubiquitous female power ballad. It is questionable whether anyone involved with this musical ever watched a Betty Boop cartoon. Birkenhead's lyrics describe the newly neutered character on stage: 'She is strong, she is smart, open mind, open heart' … and later, 'She has spunk, she has spine, she's a saint.' Sorry, Betty Boop was one hot number. Where's the part about her being a great lay? That's why all those barnyard critters were chasing her around the hayloft. No less an entity than the Hays Office censored Betty Boop back in 1935, making her a far more demure and less sexy character. 'Boop!' has clearly taken its orders from a Depression-era right-wing censor. Playing Betty, Jasmine Amy Rogers isn't given much to do other than squeal cutely. There's a reason for her new blandness, and that's because Betty, like Barbie before her, is now a feminist. As Bob Martin's meandering and relentlessly unfunny book does manage to make evident, the cartoon character is known for hitting other cartoon characters over the head with all sorts of lethal objects. No problem. They're cartoons. On stage, it's a different story. One of the musical's subplots involves a blowhard who's running to be mayor of New York. This politician makes an odd brief appearance in Act 1, but gets much more stage time when Betty joins his campaign in Act 2. Spreading her usual cheer, she gives the guy a lot of good press. Playing that creep, Erich Bergen singlehandedly turns 'Boop!' into something worth watching after nearly two hours of total tedium. Because he's stealing her show, Betty hits him over the head with a desk lamp. He's knocked out cold and never recovers, only to be rolled off stage in an office chair. This is feminism? When a man clobbers a woman into unconsciousness, even on the stage, he goes to jail. In 'Boop!,' he's the one who ends up in an orange jump suit for the curtain call. Jerry Mitchell directs and choreographs. I thought the song 'In Color, set at the Comic Con convention and populated with Marvel-like icons, was this theater season's worst staged musical number. But no, that comes just ahead of intermission when Betty visits Times Square to meet other cartoon icons there. It's difficult to say what's more embarrassing: the people in Disney outfits out on the street or the chorus at the Broadhurst in costumes that look just as seedy and smelly. Pooph, anyone? The post 'Boop!' Broadway Review: First Barbie, Now Betty Gets Dragged Into the 21 Century appeared first on TheWrap.
Chicago Tribune
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Boop! The Musical' opens on Broadway as a retro song-and-dance celebration of the cartoon
NEW YORK — Ignore the cynics and their interest in intimidating ironic innovation! With the market tanking and worry exploding all around, affordable escapism soon will be having a boffo moment at the Broadway box office. Enter at the Broadhurst Theatre a joyous, retro, family-friendly charmer for a discombobulated world. Director Jerry Mitchell's sing-and-smile-along production of 'Boop! The Musical' is like gulping a glass of fizzy sangria after a rough day, heck, after a rough three months and counting of stress and strife. What's not to love about Betty Boop, U.S.-based international ambassador? It's a rhetorical question, folks. She cannot be fired. Vastly improved from its Chicago tryout — Mitchell being a master of the dogged retrofit — 'Boop!' is now a stellar little showcase for its ascendant young star, Jasmine Amy Rogers, who does not let playing a literal cartoon character get in the way of a fully fleshed out performance, as sweet and vulnerable as it is determined and resolute. Still in her mid-20s, Rogers might not yet be a match for Broadway's biggest divas. But she sings and dances her alter ego's oversized head off, fully at ease with David Foster's lush and muscular score and Susan Birkenhead's amusing lyrics. More importantly, she fully understands what it means to play a character who has spent the last century or so hanging on in the face of formidable Disney competition. She might have played Snow White before Rachel Zegler and shown her chops as a lion tamer, but Betty Boop had to emerge from Max Fleischer film shorts, not Uncle Walt's theme parks. She had to stay relevant all these years through her own sex appeal, not decades of marketing campaigns. And she somehow has stuck around the zeitgeist even though she mostly spent her previous screen time running away from aggressive men. Deftly ignoring the little matter of her being a line-drawn cartoon, Bob Martin, the show's book writer, picks up on the idea that Betty must have become sick of those same vampish plot points, and forges a show wherein Ms. Boop undergoes a kind of early midlife crisis and craves a vacation. Thus she exits her black-and-white world via a time machine crafted by sidekick Grampy (Stephen DeRosa) and ends up, of all places, at the Javits Center in the middle of New York Comic Con, where she quickly sees that she enjoys a certain immortality. Apparently, seen-it-all New Yorkers have no issue with a 100-year-old cartoon icon coming to life before their eyes. Thus Betty's New York adventures then include falling in love with Dwayne (Ainsley Melham), acting as a surrogate mom to the spunky teenage Betty fan Trisha (Angelica Hale, another delightful Mitchell discovery) and maybe even steering New York away from the wrong ascendent mayoral candidate (Erich Bergen) by persuading Trisha's mom Carol (Anastacia McCleskey) to run for mayor herself. All in a day's work, even as Grampy is distracted by his relationship with Valentina, another of the musical's actual Boop characters, now played in a cameo by the veteran musical-comedy star Faith Prince, a piece of casting that centers this show familiar within long-standing and thus comforting Broadway traditions. Mitchell figured out that it says Betty Boop on the marquee and he excised a hefty chunk of the old Chicago caper plot in favor of giving as much stage time to Rogers as possible. Excellent choice. Audiences eat her up, as they do Hale's Trisha and the puppet pooch Pudgy, as wrangled by Phillip Huber. Like everyone else, the dog starts out in black and white, only for his schlerping tongue to gain some technicolor. Jasmine Amy Rogers (as Betty Boop) and Ainsley Melham (Dwayne) in "Boop! The Musical" on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York. (Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) The big Act 1 closer is a stellar Foster production number, 'Where I Wanna Be,' a fine showcase for this dance-forward show. Along with 'Why Look Around the Corner,' a ball-bouncing singalong, that's the anchor of Foster's score, a populist, filmic and romantically orchestrated song suite that only has one relative misfire, the eleven o'clock number, 'Something to Shout About.' 'Where I Wanna Be' is actually an apt descriptor of the entire show: a confident mid-range musical when it comes to size and spectacle, an unabashedly family- and visitor-friendly attraction and an old-school romantic comedy. If it finds its intended international audience, the cameras will keep whirring on Betty. The show also functions very much as a love letter to that devil's playground called Times Square, where Betty finds characters that look like her but have even bigger noggins. They function as their own executioners, too. She finds that strange. As do we all. Self-evidently, one has to overlook some illogicalities here, but Rogers makes that easy. The set designer David Rockwell and costume designer Gregg Barnes both have a lot of fun with the assignment but they also keep things disciplined. Shows like this often fall off the tracks when they reach too far, keep breaking their own rules or let spectacle steal humanity. Here, Betty does not allow any of that to happen. Thus 'Boop!' builds and communicates its own optimistic world, inhabits it fully and makes no apology to anyone. No 'Boop-Oop-a-Doop' is necessary.
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Clay Aiken and His Son Parker, 16, Look Like Twins During Rare Public Appearance at Broadway Opening
Clay Aiken and his son Parker had a night out on Broadway! The American Idol alum, 46, and 16-year-old Parker attended the star-studded premiere of BOOP! The Musical at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York City on Saturday evening, April 5. The pair both wore dapper looks for the occasion — and showed off their striking resemblance to each other. Aiken wore a midnight blue turtleneck sweater, beige tweed trousers and a burnt orange jacket with white pinstripes. Parker, meanwhile, put a fun and fresh spin on the classic black suit by pairing his with a black-and-white printed dress shirt. View this post on Instagram A post shared by People Magazine (@people) The two smiled and posed for photos together on the red carpet, and at one point were joined by Grammy-winning producer David Foster, who composed the music for the Broadway show. David, 75, also happens to be Parker's uncle. Aiken welcomed his son with best friend Jaymes Foster, David's sister. Though Aiken and Jaymes were not romantically linked, they made plans to raise their son together, and she became pregnant via in vitro fertilization. Related: Why Clay Aiken Says Parenting Son Parker, 16, Is 'Happy and Heartbreaking at the Same Time' (Exclusive) In December, Aiken opened up to PEOPLE about his experience as a father, describing raising his son as "happy and heartbreaking at the same time." "I'd say the most wonderful part has been watching [Parker] grow into a young man. He is an incredibly respectful and smart and responsible young man, and that is something that I'm incredibly proud of," he said at the time. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "But it's heartbreaking because they grow into little, mini adults and they change," he continued. "It's heartbreaking to see the little kid change into a young man, almost adult who doesn't need me as much." But Aiken — who was a contestant in season 2 of American Idol in 2003, coming in second place — noted that Parker's fledgling independence also brings him pride and reassurance. "You're very proud of the fact that he doesn't need you as much, right? It means you must've done something halfway decent," he explained. Related: American Idol Alum Clay Aiken Makes Rare Comments About Life as a Dad to Look-Alike Son Parker, 16: 'We Did a Good Job' While the father-son duo have been making more public appearances together lately — including a stint on Celebrity Family Feud in August 2024 — Aiken made a point to keep Parker out of the spotlight while he was younger. He recently shared that the decision to protect his son's privacy makes him proud as a father. 'We did a very good job, I think, for 16 years, keeping him completely out of the public eye,' he told E! News in November. 'I wanted him to be able to grow up as normally as he could. I appreciate that he's been able to have a normal — or as close to a normal — childhood as he could.' Read the original article on People
