Krystal Joy Brown's 'Merrily We Roll Along' Character Isn't the Villain

The first time Krystal Joy Brown experienced the late Stephen Sondheim's show Merrily We Roll Along, she was in college.

Her professor played Bernadette Peters' legendary version of the show's song 'Not A Day Goes By.' While she didn't learn much about the show, that song, and other "heavy hitters" from Merrily, stuck with Brown as she began her acting career.

"There are certain songs that are just staples and this was one of them," she told Newsweek.

Three decades after the show first premiered, Brown is getting the chance to dive deeper as she takes on the role of Gussie Carnegie in Merrily's first Broadway revival.

Merrily, with Sondheim's music and lyrics and George Furth's book, ran for only 16 performances when it originally premiered in 1981 and was considered a great flop. But this revival is already off to a very different start. It began Off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop (NYTW) in 2022 before moving to the Great White Way. The show grossed $1.3 million in the first week of previews, according to Deadline, before officially opening on Broadway on October 10 to glowing reviews.

While the cast and creative team feels the pressure to rewrite the legacy of the show, Brown feels an extra layer of responsibility. The actress, who has worked on several Broadway and regional shows, including Hair, Leap of Faith, Motown: The Musical, Big Fish and Hamilton is the first Black actress to portray Gussie.

Told in reverse chronological order, Merrily We Roll Along tells the complicated relationships of the three "old friends" as they navigate the successes and failures of love, friendship and show business.

It stars Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening, Glee, Frozen, Hamilton) as composer turned Hollywood producer Franklin Shepard, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter series, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) as Charley Kringas, Frank's lyricist and playwright, and Lindsay Mendez (Dogfight, Carousel) as Mary Flynn, an alcoholic writer and critic. Brown plays Gussie, a young, glamorous stage actress turned bitter and jealous wife of Frank.

The audience first meets Gussie at a party in her home celebrating her husband Frank's new movie in 1976. The beloved actress is upset that she was passed over as the lead of Frank's movie for a much younger actress with whom Frank is having an affair. But Gussie wasn't always like this. She was once a young ingénue when she met Frank, Charley and Mary—the former secretary who was married to her former boss, producer Joe Josephson, the man who helped launch Frank and Charley's careers.

With this performance, Brown hopes to evoke understanding and empathy for a character audiences often write off as a villain, to answer one of the show's driving questions, "How did you get to be here?"

"I want people to think of her as a Black woman struggling to survive in a very homogenous world in a very kind of specific art form at a time at the time of the Civil Rights Movement," she said. "Not to necessarily dwell on it, but to take that into account and appreciate it when thinking about her journey."

When preparing for the characters, Brown said she imagines Gussie is a collage of the tenacious leading women of her era, including Dorothy Dandridge, Diahann Carroll, Diana Ross, Eartha Kitt, Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball and Marylin Monroe.

Once she got her dream, Gussie struggled to maintain it. In the show, Gussie admits that one day, she just "made myself up." Brown said Gussie is "constantly shape-shifting" and stays one step ahead of those around her to try to control her world.

"Women have always had a shorter lifespan as far as being an artist and being an icon or sex symbol or powerhouse," she said. "There's always been an expiration date."

While this may be seen as manipulative and inauthentic, Brown views this as a form of strategic self-preservation needed to stay relevant in show business, as Gussie had to do what those more powerful than her told her to do to remain hirable and profitable.

"This idea of [actors] having to change ourselves so much in order to become something, I understand that," Brown said. "It's very easy to lose your authenticity, especially when you're trying to be a chameleon and constantly be what everyone wants you to be."

As the show progresses, it moves back in time from 1976 to 1957, charting the characters' journeys that landed them where they are at the top of the show, as the worst version of themselves.

With each jump back in time, the audience learns more about how these tight relationships unraveled and how love and success changed each person on stage.

"It's the loss of joy and hope that gets her where she is [at the beginning of the show], she wasn't born how she is and didn't start off there," Brown said. "She started off full of life and excitement and wanting to know more."

We see Gussie's career change as she goes from in demand to washed up over the span of years. As a working actor, Brown said she can relate to those moments the "terrifying" feeling that this job is her last job.

"As a person in this industry for this long time, I definitely can feel those moments of being jaded or feeling like oh, well this is just how it is or even thinking every job is your last job," she said.

Not only that, Brown jokes that any woman would act like Gussie if her husband was cheating on her in her own home.

Merrily's unique structure highlights the tragedy of the show as the audience sees how these broken relationships came to be. As the characters jump back in time, the audience is connecting the dots that lead to their eventual fates.

Brown said director Maria Friedman told her to let Gussie's inner child shine through, which allows the audience to look past the feathers and sequins to the person playing out her childhood dream as the harsh realities of the world come barreling in on her.

"I want to add as much softness to Gussie where it makes sense and where it feels right because we are complex and emotional and vulnerable and fragile and easily hurt," she said. "And I think she wants friends and she wants love and she wants connection and she wants her dreams to come true just as everybody else does."

While the costumes and set may have gotten the "Broadway upgrade," Brown said the production has fought hard to maintain the intimacy of the show's two-month run in the 200-seat NYTW.

In the larger Hudson Theater, the cast must reach the person in the back of the mezzanine and the furthest balcony.

"In the prologue, we're really encouraged to look out and reach those people and ask those questions—'How did you get to be here? What was the moment?'' she said. "We go from asking Frank the questions to asking the audience those questions on purpose, because we want people to feel as though they are included and that they are connected and we're not just talking about a story that exists but a story that is within all of us. And I think that's why this show hits so hard and so well is because it hits everyone from any walk of life."

In this version of the show, Gussie is not just a woman in mid-20th-century America, she is a Black woman. By stepping into this role, Brown must be true to the character as written, while also bringing a new layer of perspective.

"We're so similar in a lot of ways—a lot of times in this industry and in theater, being the only Black person [in the room] has been very common for me," she said. "So feeling that understanding that Gussie is Black in this iteration of the piece, she's going to feel that, she's going to feel some sort of isolation or not being understood. That's underneath the surface of everything else [she does]."

The biggest challenge, Brown said, is honoring who this character is without falling into harmful stereotypes. Historically, she said, Black women have been maligned as "divas" when they achieve a modicum of success and fame.

"Black people, Black women in particular, have been easily labeled as the aggressor, as the villain, as violent or just difficult divas," she said. "It's hard because I'm trying to play against people's preconceived notions, even though on the page, [Gussie] is a character who is kind of all those things."

Brown notes that she hopes society is prepared to see characters "in a deeper and more complex way" than they did in 1981.

While Hollywood still has ways to go in terms of increasing diversity and dismantling oppressive systems, audiences seem ready and hungry for more nuanced storytelling. Since the time Merrily originally premiered, there has been a growth in the types of stories being told, exposing audiences to characters and experiences that defy harmful stereotypes, especially for Black women.

Gussie falls somewhere within the "Good For Her" genre that has audiences cheering for messy, complicated women who overcome the patriarchy through manipulative or violent means, like Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, or find liberation in their female rage, like in Beyoncé's visual album, Lemonade.

Gussie may be a diva, but for good reason. Brown said she didn't start out that way, but her bitterness built up after years of trying to make it big and then maintain her success and security in a time of vast social and political change.

"There's hurt and there's pain," she said. "That's what happens when people have to cover up and hide who they really are or how they feel or who they can be."

Taking on this responsibility can be daunting. In times of self-doubt, Brown said she finds strength in those who came before her to clear a path for Black women to succeed—including Beyoncé.

"I can get really insecure about this role and I can be really insecure about walking out on stage in front of all of these people who may not understand her," Brown said. "Then I just think, 'What would Beyoncé do? How would Beyoncé feel in this moment?' I really look at my goalposts and my ancestors and these people who walked into these really hard situations all the time and somehow [I've] become even stronger and more powerful from it."

With this revival, there is a lot at stake for Brown and the entire company of Merrily.

Brown goes through a few unique pre-show rituals to ease her nerves, like doing the splits, repeating "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers" to herself and taking a moment to think of Sondheim, hoping that he is proud of her and the production.

In addition to proving Gussie is not the villain of this story, Brown wants to show "diehard" Sondheim fans that they've honored the original production with "tenderness, depth and authenticity."

On a personal level, Brown also hopes her role can open doors for other actors of color to "feel invited to the theater."

"It's 2023 and I am breaking a color barrier. This show has been around for 42 years and this character has never been Black," she said. "And so to me is an honor and also a historic moment. In a way because I know when I saw people who looked like me or had similar backgrounds, I felt seen and I felt capable. So if I can inspire people to feel that way and if I can inspire empathy and inspire vulnerability, that's a real goal of mine."

Merrily We Roll Along is currently playing at the Hudson Theater.