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Nothing could deter Christina Applegate from fulfilling her Broadway dream.
The actress, who was Tony-nominated for her star turn as Charity Hope Valentine in the 2005 Broadway revival of Sweet Charity, revealed in her memoir You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir (out now) that she was willing to do anything to ensure that the production made it to Broadway.
After the Married… with Children alum broke her foot during the show’s out-of-town run in Chicago, understudy Charlotte d’Amboise filled in before producers announced that the production would not transfer to New York due to lack of interest without Applegate in the titular role.
Applegate wrote in You with the Sad Eyes that doctors expected her broken fifth metatarsal to heal in 12 weeks — but she was determined to get back up on her feet, quite literally, in six.
“My doctor called me. ‘I’ve never seen a bone heal this fast before,’ he said,” Applegate, 54, wrote. “The next call I got was about ticket sales in New York plummeting because people had heard that I might not be in the show. I was told Sweet Charity was shutting down.”
At that moment, Applegate said she “started calling everyone, from the director of Jaws on down” in hopes that someone would invest in the revival, which at the time also starred Denis O’Hare as Oscar Lindquist.
She told director Steven Spielberg, “I need a break. In the form of half a million dollars.” However, “I got nowhere with anyone,” she wrote.
That’s when Applegate decided to invest.
“I put up the $500,000 myself,” she revealed. “My agent said to me, ‘Either you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met or you’re a f**king genius.’ Turns out it was a bit of both. Stupid: It was half a million bucks. Genius: The other investors realized I was serious, and by Sunday — the deeply appropriate day of the resurrection of the Lord — I got a call that confirmed we had the money we needed to continue.”
Applegate said that she begged the cast members to not take another job, knowing that the news would soon be announced that they’d play the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on 45th Street.
But first, she had to prove to the production team that she could still dance Wayne Cilento’s athletic choreography.
“I put on my unitard and my chopped-off sweatpants and my Fosse boot with the brace inside, little wires and metal to keep the foot from moving too much, and I did it,” Applegate wrote.
The musical — featuring music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and a book by Neil Simon — officially opened on May 4, 2005, and Applegate received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical.
“I pushed so hard and fought so hard not because I needed to play Charity and win a prize,” she wrote in her memoir. “Instead, I had tapped into a self-protectiveness that had been slowly building within me. I had to protect twenty-six people I loved, twenty-six people I’d just spent months rehearsing with, who were going to lose their jobs if I didn’t dance.”
You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir is currently available.
