Littleton TV star Melissa Benoist is in the driver's seat of her life | John Moore

Melissa Benoist has come a long way from playing a troll under the bridge to a girl on the bus.

Her professional resume spans “Cinderella” at the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center to TV’s “Glee,” “Waco” and “Supergirl” to now playing America’s most intrepid and idealistic political reporter on the Max series “Girls on the Bus.”

But to Paul Dwyer, co-founder of an impressive youth talent pipeline once known as the Academy of Theatre Arts, the greatest role Colorado’s sweetheart has played to date remains the tiny teen ogre dwelling under the aforementioned bridge in “Hansel and Gretel.”

“I knew he was going to say that,” Benoist said with a laugh.

But, hear him out.

“From the very beginning, Melissa played the lead in everything,” Dwyer said. “But we wanted her to learn how to play character roles as well – so we made her the troll. We gave her a hump. She had prosthetics. And she was dynamite.”

Wait, Benoist interjects. Prosthetics?

“That man put me in a ‘Star Wars’ mask!” she said.

Nearly 20 years later, Benoist fulfilled a lifelong dream to perform on Broadway by starring in “Beautiful: The Carole King Story.” And she used some of the precious little space allowed in her first-ever Broadway bio to call out her first theater teachers, Dwyer and Academy co-founder Alann Worley. She thanked them “for making me fall in love with the stage in the first place.”

That speaks to the bond Benoist still feels for the Denver theater community from her earliest stage appearances to her graduation from Arapahoe High School to today.

“There is a feeling of community in the Colorado theater scene that I have not seen really exist anywhere else in the United States,” she said. “I tell people all the time that the Colorado theater community is a group of people who really, truly care and are passionate. And I'm so grateful to have been a part of it. I carry it with me always.”

Imagine attending the 2000 production of “The Sound of Music” at the late Country Dinner Playhouse in Englewood. Benoist, then 11, played little Brigitta, younger sister to Annaleigh Ashford’s Liesl and Jesse JP Johnson’s Kurt. Ashford went on to win the Tony Award for “You Can’t Take it with You” and just starred in “Sweeney Todd” opposite Josh Groban. Johnson has performed in three Broadway musicals, including as Boq in “Wicked.”

“I remember that Melissa was an amazing little Brigitta,” said Ashford. “Of all the kids, Brigitta has the strongest personality, and Melissa was there, even at 11. She made really good, bold choices. She has a great voice, she took direction well and she listened.”

Benoist was a high-school senior performing as Peron’s teen prostitute in “Evita” when the Country Dinner Playhouse abruptly closed in 2007. “Growing up, I just never wanted to be anywhere else,” she said. “That’s where I really found out who I was.”

All aboard the 'Bus'

“Girls on the Bus” is both an entertaining and enlightening look behind the curtain of political reporting. Or, as we call it, “pack journalism” – where feral reporters all travel together and are exposed to the same old stupid stump speeches and have to seriously scramble to come up with anything original or meaningful.

It’s based on former New York Times reporter Amy Chozick’s book “Chasing Hillary,” which chronicled the 2016 presidential election. That was itself a nod to Timothy Crouse's seminal “The Boys on the Bus,” which details life on the road for reporters (male, natch) covering the 1972 election.

The TV series introduces a fictional, present-day campaign that makes no mention of current real-life presidential candidates (thank God), while offering plenty of clever Easter Eggs that reference real-life politicos like Stacey Abrams and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The series is both a comic and prescient commentary on the state of American politics and journalism in funny, cutting ways – with a little sex thrown in.

At the heart of the series is Benoist’s comically flawed Sadie McCarthy, a journalist who is rebuilding her newspaper career and credibility after having committed the cardinal sin of coming to fully believe in her assigned candidate. When her Hillary-like idol lost, Sadie’s emotional breakdown was fully (and funnily) exposed for the viral amusement of bloodthirsty social trolls around the world.

Now, she’s giving objectivity a try – while sometimes bantering with the ghost of the original campaign fearer and loatherer – her personal hero, Hunter S. Thompson (a man, she is told, “who would be an H.R. crisis” today.)

The ensemble includes three other ambitious (female) reporters, all with wildly different journalistic ideologies that combine to make for a perfect subset of our political discourse today: One is an agenda-driven pawn of the powerful Christian media, one is a principled relic of the dying establishment media (meaning she’s fully ignored), and one is a Gen Z TikTok phenomenon with no journalism experience but by far the biggest following – and therefore the most influence.

But the “Bus” takes a quick right turn, upending what first presents itself as four competitive women surely out to tear each other down in disappointingly cliched TV ways. Journalists, after all, are very competitive and – some – can be unscrupulous. But these four women seem to be bonding.

“That is exactly what we're going for, and I think it's one of the more important messages of the show,” said Benoist, who also serves as a producer.

“It’s about women supporting women. But it is also about finding a way to relate and find empathy for anyone who has entirely different views than you do, and an entirely different relationship to the political spectrum. We're trying to showcase that you can't just paint someone with a red or a blue paintbrush. Things are so polarized right now, but you can't just put people into boxes. Even though we’re from different walks of life, we're not all that different. We all want the same things. We can find common ground.”

Most important, she says: “These four women do not expect to find family in each other – but they do. And that is so powerful.”

A long and winding campaign trail

Benoist’s journey to a peaceful coexistence with stardom has come at a heavier price than most. Now, with a joyful marriage to actor Chris Wood, a son named Huxley and a high-profile new TV series, it seems she’s really, finally there. Which makes landing a role like Sadie at this exact moment in her life and career “feel really special,” she said.

“It feels like a step in a really exciting direction toward what I feel like I'm capable of doing, and toward what kind of roles I want to pursue and what stories I want to tell. ‘The Girls on the Bus’ is so meaningful to me because this is a subject matter that I deeply care about, and a story that I want to be a part of bringing to audiences. So, yeah, it means everything.”

Dwyer, for one is not surprised.

“Nothing does when it comes to Melissa,” he said. “Her career keeps going higher and higher. She had no glass ceiling as a child – as human being or as a performer.”

Frankly, after a weeks-long “Girls on the Bus” media blitz that landed Benoist on The Kelly Clarkson Show alongside fellow Denver hero Peyton Manning, and on the cover of the New York Times’ arts section, I couldn’t quite believe she was talking with the likes of me just a few hours after the first two episodes of “Girls on the Bus” landed on TVs around the world. I told her she should be sleeping in.

“Well, that's not an easy thing to do with a 3-year-old,” she said.

Which leads to the one question I’ve hesitated to ask her, and it’s not one I think I’ve asked in any other celebrity interview. But I have known this one since she was in the single digits. I was invited to her high-school senior recital at The Avenue Theater. I remember speaking with her in 2012 after she had started filming “Glee” but before any of her episodes had aired. I asked her then what it was like knowing that, in just a few days, life as she knew it was about to be over forever. She admitted it was a little scary because being famous was never anything she felt like she wanted or needed.

No one could have known then how scary it would be. In 2019, she opened up to the world about the domestic violence she experienced from her first husband.

So now I want to ask her the one question I really care about. The only one anyone who ever knew or cared about Melissa as a kid running around Denver stages really wants to know now:

Are you happy?

That, she said, was a big question. 

“Motherhood has changed everything,” she said. “It's only enriched my life. It has solidified my priorities in a really empowering way. I think that I spent the majority of my 20s just doing what everyone told me to do because I wanted to succeed. But my definition of success is so different now – and it’s a load off to not put so much pressure on myself. Because the most important thing for me to do in my life is to help shape this young man that I have.”

That young man is little Huxley. “He is a maniac,” she said, “just like I was when I was a kid.” But a marvelous maniac.

“I see so much of me and my husband in him. I think if he had grown up in Denver, he definitely would've been at the Academy of Theater Arts with Paul and Alann. He has that same energy. I don't know what he'll do with his life, but he is musical and a showman and we love him.”

As she looks back, she forges ahead.

“Look, I feel like I've been through a lot in the past 15 years. And while I wish that I hadn't had to go through some of those things, that time truly has shaped me. I know my limits. I know what's right for me, and I know what isn't. I know when to say that it's not right – and I'm so glad I have that skill now.”

Online extra: More from Melissa Benoist:

John Moore: How do you even begin to prepare for a role like Sadie McCarthy?

Melissa Benoist: I read anything and everything our creator, Amy Chozick, told me to read. I read her own book, of course, which was invaluable and gave so much insight into her relationship with Hillary Clinton. She gave me a whole list of books, and I devoured all of them. I read “What It Takes: The Way to the White House” by Richard Ben Cramer, which is a thousand pages. It's like ‘The Iliad’ of political journalism, and I ate it up. It's about the 1988 election when Joe Biden plagiarized and Gary Hart had an affair and Bob Dole was angry and George H.W. Bush (checked his watch) during the debate. So much happened in that presidential cycle. It's so good. I also read a David Foster Wallace book called “Up, Simba!” I watched so many documentaries, including “Journeys with George” by Alexandra Pelosi, which was fascinating because you see someone on the opposite side of the aisle being charmed by George W. Bush. And of course I read “The Boys on the Bus” and “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72,” which are a bit dated, but still, you get the vibe for a time that we tend to romanticize. I just tried to absorb all of it.

John Moore: When you look back at 1992, when Dan Quayle was essentially eliminated as a presidential heir because he misspelled the word “potato,” and then you look at all the things that do not eliminate a candidate today ... what does that say about us?

Melissa Benoist: I take that to mean that journalism and the media are certainly a pillar of our society that we cannot lose. Because they do carry sway, and they can make-or-break an election for someone sometimes. But it’s tricky. These are all the questions that we're examining with the show.

John Moore: I may be coming at this from a different place, because I see all that power that journalism once had and I put it in the past tense because of the way people have turned away from credible information and turned into rabid truth-deniers. Yes, the media reported Quayle’s spelling gaffe, but it wasn’t the media who ended his career. That was the consequence of his action being reported and distributed and absorbed by people in the Republican Party who came to the  conclusion that maybe he shouldn't be their president. But if you fast forward 30 years, now we’re in a world where a candidate can be under federal indictment. Who says he can walk down the street and shoot people and still win an election. Who can say what he said about grabbing women, and there are no consequences. It’s not the job of the media to sway anyone, but when basic reporting brings no real consequences the way it did for Quayle, I start to wonder what influence the principled media has over any of it anymore.

Melissa Benoist. They certainly don't have influence in the traditional sense that they used to, at least not in the form of a print newspaper or a cable news network. But we talked a lot in the making of this show about the changing tides of social media and its involvement in all of this, because that's something the candidates are using as well. Trump bypasses the press on a daily basis and uses his social media to get his message directly to his base, and that is unprecedented. But on the flip side, we have people reporting the news on TikTok and Instagram who are, in essence, activists. It’s almost “activism journalism,” and I do think that is powerful – especially for the younger generation.

John Moore: Well, your pilot episode certainly had me talking to the TV several times, particularly when the older, traditional journalist says to the young TikTok influencer that “being in the right place at the right time is not journalism.” And I said, ‘Oh, but I absolutely think that it is.’ And then the TikToker kind of proudly says that she does not consider what she does to be journalism. Which begs the question of how we define “the media.” I define the media as “anyone with distribution.” Anyone who can post an opinion or information and have it be seen by followers – that is the very definition of the media. And that includes anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account. So when people trash “the media,” I respond: “Well, the media is everyone. So if you don't like the media – look in the mirror, because you are part of the problem.” And that includes your TikTok activist, because she is part of the media. 

Melissa Benoist: Yes, she is. And that’s what's lovely about our show because we have those opposing sides, and every woman that we're following in the show has a very different opinion of  what “the media” is. My character, Sadie, romanticizes this bygone era that doesn't exist anymore. And we have Grace, the seasoned professional who's been in it for forever and she maybe isn't really hip to the way things are changing. Kimberlyn is reporting for a TV station with a clear political agenda. And then you have Lola, who is the new-school TikToker. But all of them are trying to find a way to meet in the middle and to find the most effective way to get the truth to society. And as long as journalists – or civilians who are informed and care about the well-being of our country – don't lose sight of that, I will hold on to hope.

John Moore: So, on a completely different note: Is there any world in which you return to the stage anytime in the next few years?

Melissa Benoist: Yes, I really hope so.

John Moore: Is that a wish, or is there a realistic path in the works?

Melissa Benoist: For now, that is a wish. There have been opportunities in the past that just didn't work for (my schedule), but I still have the dream of originating a role in a new musical, and that is something I have not yet achieved. That would be like going home. It always feels like going home when I am on stage, so I'll never lose that.

John Moore: Stupid question: Would that have to be Broadway or could that potentially be in a new musical in Colorado?

Melissa Benoist: You never know. Why not? I mean, yeah, what the heck?

John Moore; So, to finish up: Can you put the last 15 years of your life into any kind of perspective yet?

Melissa Benoist: It is kind of absurd to think back on it. I still pinch myself when I see what Annaleigh (Ashford) is doing and Amy Adams and all these people who came out of our community are doing. That still blows my mind. We're so fortunate to do what we do every day. Whenever I walk on a set, I cannot believe that I am where I am, and that I've actually succeeded in doing this as a living.

John Moore: So, wherever this is … you’ve arrived. When you look back at all the tradeoffs along the way, and you look at what it costs, how do you feel about the journey?

Melissa Benoist: I talk about this with my husband all the time. I think the peaks and the valleys are what make you a better artist. And I, for one, don't ever want to lose those moments where the trade-offs are difficult, or you might have to sacrifice something, or you don't get what you wanted. Those are the moments where I feel like you're the most alive and in tune with your humanity. Those are the moments that artists need to be able to speak to other people and express themselves.