Broadway's Anna from "Frozen" on How They Keep the Show Fresh

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Patti Murin, who stars as Anna in "Frozen" on Broadway, who explains how they keep the show fresh every night.

1/22/19 #2189

Excerpt:

"There she is! Patti Murin. And she's an actress in Frozen. She plays Anna, and her sister is Elsa? Mm hmm. Our daughter Olivia broke that down for me. [laughter] By the way, I was gonna ask you how people mispronounce your last name, and how do you get it right? I'm gonna leave that alone. [laughter] Give us the Frozen story. With the two sisters. What's the deal? It's basically about two sisters who were the best of friends, and one of them happens to be able to shoot ice from her hands. And she... it kind of... it gets out of control when they're kids, and she accidentally hits her sister and almost kills her. And so they spend the rest of their childhood separated. And it's basically all about the quest to find each other again. Elsa accidentally lets... unleashes her powers again at her coronation when she becomes the Queen, and she runs away, and on it goes, literally climbs a mountain to go and find her because she loves her sister and she doesn't want to lose her again. But Elsa doesn't want to. She wants to protect her sister from herself. Hmm. So it's basically that, but Elsa does... she sets off an eternal Winter everywhere, so aside from the problem of the relationship of the sisters they also have to figure out how to basically save the world. Fascinating. Yeah. And by the way, I talked to our daughter about this, she said that Frozen... is it just about one of the most popular kid's movies first and...? It's one of the most... I believe it's the most successful animated film of all time... I believe. I think it was at one point. Does that make more pressure? What? Sorry for interrupting. Does that create more pressure? You know, it... a little bit. But they did such a great job of taking the story that everyone already knew and loved and translating it to the stage. And, you know, we have 12 new songs, and we... there's so much more opportunity to actually delve into the characters, and what's great is that, you know, they're animated characters and we're the first people that are actually embodying them. You know, like the first people on Broadway that are actually embodying these humans. So we're humanizing them, which is really cool. You know, there's... everyone has their favorites and their opinions, but honestly the... everyone who comes to the show and the fans have just been nothing but supportive. By the way, speaking of humanizing? Mm hmm. Where did you come from? I grew up in a small town. Like it's north of New York City. [laughter] Where...? How...? [laughter] Is that how you're gonna do it..."