Years ago, when 1950s pop singer Connie Francis was asked — rhetorically at the time — whom she’d want to play her in some future biopic, she didn’t miss a beat. “An unknown,”shesaid.
“I thought that was such a badass answer and part of why I love her,” says Gracie Lawrence, who discovered the old quip while researching her role as Francis not for some future biopic but for Just in Time, a new Broadway musical about the ill-fated life of fellow ’50s crooner Bobby Darin.
“To the extent that I still feel unknown,” Lawrence goes on, “Ifeel like I’m doing right by herrequest.”
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“Unknown” might be something of a stretch for Lawrence, 28, who has been leading the soul-pop band Lawrence (alongside her brother Clyde) for nearly 10 years. They’ve released four studio albums, have played Coachella and Bonnaroo and recently opened for the Jonas Brothers and The Rolling Stones. She’s had guest roles on prestige shows like The Americans and Billions and last year replaced Reneé Rapp as a series regular on The Sex Lives of College Girls.
She’s not even entirely unknown on Broadway. “I actually did Brighton Beach Memoirs when I was 12,” she says. “It was my first professional acting job, and I remember what it was like to be onstage and have the audience react to you in that intimate setting. You feel like The Beatles.”
Still, playing Francis on the Great White Way is definitely a career milestone, especially for a performer who has been honing her vocal chops since she was 5, when she sang Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” in a kindergarten music class. She grew up in a family of New York creatives — her father is screenwriter Marc Lawrence, best known for penning Miss Congeniality, and her mother is a dance teacher — and credits her parents for nurturing not only her talent but her interest in the business.
“I was the Wicked Witch in a childhood production of The Wizard of Oz, and my mom noticed how seriously I took it,” she says. “I would run lines every night athome.”
When Just in Time director Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!, American Utopia) reached out to Lawrence last summer about an early workshop, she was on tour and prepping for an upcoming show at Radio City. The logistical commitments of a Broadway play were daunting, but the chance to portray a legend like Francis (her parents played plenty of music from that era during her childhood) and to work alongside Jonathan Groff as Darin (whose hypersalivation as King George made sitting in the front row of Hamilton a dangerously soggy experience) were too enticing to turn down. “I met him on the first day of the workshop and we fell in love,” she says of her new co-star.
The musical uses Darin and Francis’ catalogs — oldies that even young folks will recognize like “Dream Lover,” “Splish Splash” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — to tell their volatile love story. Darin ultimately ended up marrying another singer, Sandra Dee (played by Erika Henningsen) but he and Francis remained friendly until his death in 1973, at just 37 years old (ironically, of heartproblems).
The role gave Lawrence a break from singing her own autobiographical songs onstage, as did her appearance this winter in episodes of Sex Lives of College Girls, on which she played the show’s resident theater geek Kacey. “Kacey has real moments of insecurity as a performer, and I relate to that as someone who still has paralyzing nerves every single time I go onstage,” Lawrence says. “And Connie’s experience is all about being a woman in music. I’ve often been the only woman in a songwriting room.”
Just in Time is still in previews — it opens April 26 — but Lawrence’s fans are already flocking to the show. “People tell me that since the band isn’t touring right now, they came to see me here instead.” She’s been meeting hordes at the stage door, talking to young women about their love of the theater and receiving gifts (recently, someone gave her a hand-drawn portrait of the wholecast).
The real Connie Francis, who is 87 now and lives in Florida, hasn’t seen her performance yet, but Lawrence is OK with that. “Part of the way I’m honoring her,” she says, “is for her to do literally whatever she wants.”
This story appeared in the April 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
