“We need you to do the whole show by yourself in a studio.”
I fucking did it.
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. The entire show, with someone reading the other lines—I did all my dance numbers, all my songs, in front of Wayne Cilento, the choreographer.
I’ll never forget the look on his face when I finished. As he called the producers, he was crying.
“She fucking did it!” Wayne said through tears.
I sat out the show during the rest of the previews because I kept hitting my foot with my cane during “If My Friends Could See MeNow.” I knew that for me to be there on opening night, I needed to skip one particularly balletic scene filled with leaps. By that time everyone in New York—even the sad littleNew York Timescritic who panned me—knew about my broken foot. It was the talk of the town.
When I walked into restaurants, people didn’t look at my boobies anymore.
They looked at my foot.
This was a first.
Even though Ben Brantley at theNew York Timesdidn’t like what I did—his comment “While she executes her steps with care and precision, dance is not a transcendent form of self-expression for Ms. Applegate” was horribly brutal about a person basically dancing on one foot—enough folks did. Even the notoriously picky Michael Riedel from theNew York Postwrote that I was “dedicated and determined” and that “she tamed [me] with her charm, warmth, vulnerability, and expert comic timing (all this, while icing the broken foot during the intermission).”
April 2006
So I fought, and fought! I won, and I lost. So distracted. So I go to Boston, in support for me, for them. On a mission to heal in miracle time. Praying, healing, trying. But yet allowing God to do what needed to be done. Then they shut me out, my god! “The company doesn’t want you here. Don’t come around. Stay away from the show you started. The show that is up because of you.”
Whatever. Hit me again and again. I will prevail; I will not falter. Try it!!
So “Good Friday” came along. Oh yeah, watching someone else do your show is wild… So they closed us down. Didn’t cry. Got still and began the process of getting us all back together. How can I say goodbye to distraction, to all of it? How can I go back to L.A. without having finished? How can all the hard work and time and growth we put into this just fall away in one moment? Well, it only lost me a big phone bill and 500 thousand dollars. Now I do this for free. Because I love it… So now I am here watching a rehearsal without me in it. So strange. Yet it’s okay now. This is work. Not about ego. It’s important. I never knew I was a fighter. I am focused and driven and determined. I love who I am right now. I love you, foot. I know you are perfect. I am ready. To prevail, to succeed, to be happy. I love being here. And all is well. I’ve been angry, devastated, joyous, pained, remorseful, the whole nine yards.
I pushed so hard and fought so hard not because I needed to play Charity and win a prize. 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.
I still had a 55 percent broken foot when we opened on Broadway. I danced with the fear of God that I could break my foot again.
My foot never quite healed correctly because I danced on it for the entire run. Back then, I displayed a grit that I sometimes worry I don’t have anymore. But I’ve always been a survivor that way.
Playing Charity, insisting I would do so with a broken foot, andtaking a significant financial risk was love made manifest. It wasn’t about ego or Tonys or a better review in theTimes; it was about keeping that cast together, keeping them in work and fulfilled, letting their genius shine onstage after all that effort. I couldn’t just let it die.
I’d dance on one leg again for that kind of love.
On the morning of May 10, 2005, I was lying in my bed in my town house on Eleventh Street in Manhattan. I was living there while performing inSweet Charity,and as I was luxuriating in a rare late-morning start, I got a beep on my pager. It was a message from my publicist. She had some news.
I let her words sink in. I was alone, and I didn’t call anyone. I wanted to really feel it, but I couldn’t—I just couldn’t be excited for myself. Part of me knew that this was the culmination of a life’s dream, my Broadway dream. Another part of me heard that girl from all those years ago saying, “You’re doing it.” I put the leash on my dog, Tallulah, and walked north to the Fourteenth Street subway station. There I headed east on the L train and changed to the 6 train, and then up to Candle, a vegan place on the east side that I love. I got my favorite sandwich—the Cajun Seitan—and tucked it into my backpack, along with my purple hippie-dippy blanket and a book to read. Then the two of us headed farther north on the 6 to Hunter College, where I walked west into Central Park to Sheep Meadow. There I sat on my blanket with my sandwich, Tallulah staring up at me, begging for a bite.
As I was trying to not eat the entire sandwich—it had beenknown to revisit me while I was dancing—my phone rang. It was Michael Riedel from theNew York Post.He would eventually write that nice notice about me, but he hadn’t always been so kind. At the behest of my publicist, I took the call.
“Congratulations,” he said. “How are you celebrating?”
“Well, Michael,” I said, “I’m sitting in Sheep Meadow eating my favorite sandwich. And in a few minutes, I’m going to walk to Columbus Circle and get on the train and head down to the theater and do another show.”
“Have you told anyone?” he said.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m just sitting in the meadow with my dog and I’m having my vegan sandwich and I’m okay.”
I thanked Michael for calling and hung up. I was alone again. I didn’t call my mom. I didn’t call my friends. I did nothing. To call them all to tell them about my Tony nomination would have counted as me “doing it,” gloating, being a pill, embodying the worst of my business, and anyway, I didn’t know how to feel. I wanted to hate myself because I didn’t feel I deserved it. Truthfully, I have never known how to deal with the fact that I’m a successful person and yet I hate myself. That breeze called happiness seldom wafted by whatever hammock I was in, and it certainly didn’t blow that morning in Central Park. All I’d ever wanted in my life was to be onstage in a Fosse-inspired show. But then Brantley had attended previews when I still had to sit out parts of the show to save myself for the actual run, and I’d danced the rest on a broken foot, so in being brutally critical he had made me feel that I just wasn’t good enough.
Tallulah and I walked to the south part of the park, got on the subway at the Fifty-Ninth Street station, and headed down to Broadway. I got ready to do another show.
When I arrived, the cast and crew whooped and hollered. I looked at them, all these wonderful people.
“Let’s get ready. Let’s do what we have to do.”
