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Before Orfeh received a Tony Award nomination for her celebrated performance as Paulette in the 2007 Broadway musical Legally Blonde, she almost didn’t book the job.
“I had to crawl through hoops of fire, sliding down a razor blade into an alcohol river,” the actress revealed on the Saturday, August 22, episode of the Odd Woman Out podcast. “That’s how it came to me.”
During the podcast episode, the actress discussed what it was like working on the 2007 musical stage adaptation starring Laura Bell Bundy as Harvard Law student Elle Woods. However, she told podcast host Samantha Dawn Tuozzolo that landing the role of Paulette was no easy task.
“I was bare-knuckling it up the side of a mountain with no straps or anything,” Orfeh said. “It was very, very difficult to get that role.”
Aside from the audition process lasting six-and-a-half weeks, Orfeh claimed that “nobody wanted me in the show,” except for one person — Jerry Mitchell, who was making his Broadway directorial debut with the project and also served as choreographer.
“He was the one that was really on my side,” Orfeh explained. “But nobody else on the creative team was interested in me at all. I was not the right look. I was not the right type — whatever they thought.”
Though Orfeh won Mitchell over in the audition room, at one point, she said she got a phone call saying, “We’re so sorry. It’s not going any further.”
At that moment, she called Mitchell, who told her: “I didn’t say that. I never said it’s not going further.”
Orfeh eventually landed the role and went out of town with the production for its premiere at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre in early 2007 before the musical transferred to Broadway that fall.
During its tryout run, Orfeh said, people even thought they may have made a mistake.
“They weren’t altogether convinced when we were out of town either,” Orfeh said, explaining that she has a “very specific way of rehearsing” before everything falls into place when it’s time to put the show in front of an audience.
“Jerry will tell people, ‘Just let her get in front of an audience. This is how she works,’” Orfeh said. “But they were not convinced until an audience came into the Golden Gate Theatre.”
However, Orfeh said that she had to stay true to herself and remain confident. “I knew because I know who I am, and I know how I work,” she said.
That Broadway season, Orfeh was nominated for a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance as Paulette.
“Nothing’s easy,” she concluded. “I always tell people, ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes in my shoes. I just make it look good!’”
Photo Credit: Bruce Glikas
