The Secret Garden

Patrick: Hey, “Broadway Backstory” listeners. Patrick here. We are so excited to bring you this episode about “The Secret Garden” and its Tony winning star, Daisy Eagan. I wanted to let everyone know that “The Secret Garden” is currently playing at The Shakespeare Theatre in DC, and Daisy Eagan is starring in the show once again; this time in the role of Martha. Wouldn’t you know it: TodayTix operates in DC. So if you’re planning to see the show like I just did, download the TodayTix app for free on IOS and Android, or visit todaytix.com to check out the deals.

While we’re on the subject of TodayTix, I want to say they really are the easiest way to buy last-minute theater tickets at the best prices; not just to musicals like “The Secret Garden,” you guys, but also plays, comedies, operas, and ballets – all kinds of live events. TodayTix is now available in more than 10 global cities, including New York, London, Chicago, and San Francisco. TodayTix offers you insider access and exclusive deals. You can get tickets up to 50 percent off with just a few taps. So download the TodayTix app for free, or visit todaytix.com to see what’s playing this week in your city and treat yourself to a show. You deserve it.

From TodayTix and Theater People, this is “Broadway Backstory,” the podcast that finds out how a show developed from an idea to a full Broadway production. I’m your host, Patrick Hinds. Today we’re tackling the ‘90s classic, “The Secret Garden.” Through conversations with the show’s writers, producers, director, and stars, we’ll find out how the show developed from the beloved children’s book into the Tony winning Broadway hit.

[music clip from “The Secret Garden”]

[video clip]

This is a video clip of Daisy Eagan on “Regis and Kathy Lee” in 1991. Regis’ wife, Joy, was cohosting that day in Kathy Lee’s place. Daisy was 11 at the time. She had just won a Tony Award for her work in “The Secret Garden,” making her the youngest female ever to win the award. It’s a distinction she still holds, and she was on “Regis and Kathy Lee” to promote the show.

Regis: … tough to get through all of – were you surprised that you won?

Daisy: Yes, very. I didn’t expect it, so I …

Regis: You didn’t expect it all.

Daisy: No.

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Regis: Well, it was wonderful.

Daisy: Thank you.

Joy: You’re really wonderful in the play. As a matter of fact, you have to have a British accent, too, don’t you, Daisy?

Daisy: Yes.

Joy: And you learned that real quickly.

Daisy: Yes …

Patrick: Daisy is a little shy in the interview, as any 11-year-old would be; but the video is amazing. Stumbling upon it recently, as I did, reminded me that, at that point in her life, Daisy Eagan was an absolute phenomenon; especially for a generation of theater kids like me, for whom “The Secret Garden” had made Daisy a bona fide child star.

Joy: What did your friends say to you the day after you won the Tony? Were they all excited for you?

Daisy: Well, you know, they said congratulations; but then one girl – I was standing at the end of the hall, talking to a teacher; and she came out of another classroom at the other side of the hall. She went, “Daisy!”, and charged down the hall. So I was like, ah!

Regis: You’re a Tony winner, the highest honor that you can win onstage …

Patrick: Full disclosure here. Daisy Eagan is one of my best friends. We’ve talked a fair amount about “The Secret Garden” over the years, but never really in depth. So learning about her journey with the show and how “The Secret Garden” got made in the first place was one of the things that inspired me to create this podcast series. So let’s start at the beginning.

“The Secret Garden” is a classic children’s book from 1911. It tells the story of a 10-year-old girl named Mary Lennox who, after the death of her parents, is sent to live with her uncle, Archie, in a remote mansion on the moors in Yorkshire, England. Archie is a recluse who suffered his own losses. His wife died giving birth to their son, Colin. Colin has spent most of his young life bedridden with illness. The musical version centers around Mary discovering a secret garden on the property of the mansion and bringing life and happiness back to the family. Here’s Daisy.

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Daisy: It really was my favorite book growing up, and I must have read it six or seven times before “Secret Garden,” the musical, was ever a glimmer in my eye. As I’m speaking to you, we are sitting in my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house in Park Slope. I can see how it was set up. I had a bunkbed over there. The top bunk was covered in stuffed animals. I had these cabinets that ran along this wall and a little window seat over there. I would act out “The Secret Garden” in here. I would be Mary Lennox in Misselthwaite Manor, going through the dark halls. It was spooky, and I was lonely; and then I would find this garden. I’d act out the whole thing.

Patrick: That is unbelievable.

Daisy: I know, I know. It’s like – if you wrote this, people would be like, it’s a little contrived.

Patrick: Right about the time that 10-year-old Daisy was acting out the book in her bedroom, producer Heidi Landesman – now Heidi Ettinger – was in the early stages of developing the book as a musical.

Heidi: Some old friends of mine gave me a version to look at of a “Secret Garden” that was being done in the UK. I looked at a musical version. I looked at it and listened to it, and thought, wow – this doesn’t work; but this is a really good idea. Someone should take this material and do it the right way.

Patrick: And so once you made that decision, what steps did you take to start to make it happen?

Heidi: I think I called Marsha.

Marsha: Heidi Ettinger called me. We were talking about …

Patrick: This is Marsha Norman. Up to this, she was best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Night Mother.”

Marsha: … and I had had trouble getting into the musical theater, because people thought I wrote all these serious, dark plays. It’s a great joy for me that Heidi, as my friend, was able to actually take me seriously and say, well, how about writing a musical to “Secret Garden.” I said, hey, I would love to write a musical; and what’s “The Secret Garden.”

Heidi: We were both taking a huge leap there. She’d never written a musical. She was certainly not known for particularly cheerful material. So we started playing around at that point, and then we started going through the process of trying to find a composer.

[music clip from “The Secret Garden”]

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Lucy: Well, they knew they wanted Paul McCartney to write the music; but he wasn’t available.

Patrick: This is Lucy Simon. She was one of several composers Heidi and Marsha

were considering hiring to write the music for the show.

Lucy: They spoke to various different composers. I don’t know who they were. But when I gave them one of the songs that Marsha had, a beginning lyric to; which was, “I heard someone crying;” that was what they were looking for.

Heidi: Clearly she had figured out the right tone. It captured something about the time and the place that the other composers really hadn’t. So she’d found the musical language to use, really, right away; which had a lot to do with the moors and the moodiness and the British vocabulary; which made a lot of sense.

Marsha: What Lucy gave us was the location of the show. I could have easily written Yorkshire accents, and the actors could have performed them; but what we really needed was that Celtic folk rock sound that was brought …

[music clip from “The Secret Garden”]

Patrick: For several years, the three worked on shaping the show together; and when they felt it was ready, they took the show out of town.

Heidi: We did an out of town version in, I think, Virginia, which was a disaster. It’s the only way to put it. It was very clear from that that we were going in the wrong direction in many different ways. At that point I managed to put together a group of investors who thought this was initially a great idea, loved what they had heard of the score; came to Virginia, and basically pulled out.

Patrick: This version of the show didn’t work, Heidi says, because it was relentlessly dark. The show focused too much on the adults and not enough on the children; and so it lost everything that was uplifting and redemptive about the book. It was the bleakest possible telling of the much loved story. Book writer Marsha Norman described the atmosphere of the that version as a stone cold gray world.

Marsha: That wasn’t what all the families were coming to see with their girls, the beautiful dresses, and the bows and the ribbons and the patent shoes. There is an expectation about “The Secret Garden” that, yes, the house can be cold and dark and whatever; but the garden has to be this world of lush promise; and the awakening of the garden being so uber symbolic about chances for hope and life, even coming out of the darkest winter. It was awful to watch the reviews come in. It was awful to watch the producers go away. But it was

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thrilling, and I want to say that again. It was thrilling to see that Heidi was not scared. She, as lead producer, was like, I’m not backing away. I just tried something, and it didn’t work the way that I thought; but I’ve not lost my faith in the possibility of this musical as a great show.

Heidi: At that point I just completely believed that this could happen, and this creative team could make it happen; so I took it to a number of directors, and Susan was the one who, I think, responded the best and most favorably to it.

Susan: First they sent me Lucy’s CD, just the music with Lucy singing; and I fell in love with the score. So I was just …

Patrick: This is directory Susan Schulman. After being invited to a reading of the show, she signed on to direct. She had a very specific idea about what wasn’t working and the changes that needed to be made.

Susan: There were plot lines that were distracting. It’s not that it wasn’t good; it’s just that it was distracting from the main character. I thought you needed to make a decision that Mary was the main character, and everybody else, basically, was – though they were extremely important – secondary. You can’t have four or five main characters in a musical. You really need to follow a journey, and she was the one with a journey. Everyone else went through things and had arc, but it’s Mary’s story.

Heidi: Susan worked, I think, brilliantly with Marsha in terms of restructuring some of the script. She was great with Lucy in terms of editing and clarifying what the score was; really making the emotional thread extremely clear, and turning it into, ultimately, a tale of triumph and survival as opposed to a darker road.

Patrick: The new version of the show worked; and through a series of readings – some in town, one up in Saratoga New York – the creative team got the newly revised show back up on its feet. Then it came time for the backers’ audition, which essentially is a workshop presentation of the show for potential investors. These are make it or break it moments in the life of a new musical. Either they attract the money to continue the journey towards Broadway, or they don’t; and the show essentially dies.

Heidi: I managed to raise some more money. I scraped money, basically, out of family and friends; which is sort of what you have to do at that point in the process. So we did this workshop, and it was a big hit. Suddenly the material emerged very clearly. The audience in the workshop all sobbed a lot. It became clear, even to my old investors who had all bailed, that in fact there was something here after all. So I was able to pull them back into the fray. The Dodgers, at that point, got involved, and we were able to pull in that group of people. So we saw a much clearer way forward after that point.

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Patrick: At that point, the creative team began auditioning for the cast they would use for their out of town tryout and then, hopefully, on Broadway. I have to pause here and say that Daisy Eagan’s audition story is kind of crazy. I’ve heard it from her, her father, her sister; but I didn’t realize until I was doing interviews for this episode that it’s kind of legendary among the show’s creative team and, in general, people who working on both sides of the table in Broadway in the early ‘90s.

Susan: Mary was a very difficult role to cast. Not only does the child need to be a talented, good actor, instinctual; sing well; I wanted a sense of humor, because she could be really sort of off-putting if she doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Daisy: So my very first audition for “The Secret Garden” was an appointment, thank goodness; because I was in “Les Mis” at the time. I went in, and I sang “Castle on a Cloud,” because I’d been singing it for almost a year and a half in “Les Mis.” I sang it on my knees, the way that I did it in the show. When I was done, the casting director was like, okay, great; can you try it this time standing.” I think she literally just wanted to see if I could still do it, not the way I did it in the show.

Marsha: Well, it was unheard of to find a 10-year-old girl, at the time, that wasn’t actually desiring to be in “Annie.” Mary Lennox was quite a different character to appear in the musical world. We’d never really seen Mary Lennox before. We’d only seen these big, belching girls.

Susan: The moment Daisy walked into the room, there was something about her that caught my eye. First of all, she had a basket with an egg in it.

Marsha: When Daisy came in to audition, she came in with an egg in a nest.

Heidi: Then Daisy Eagan came in. She was carrying an Easter basket. It seemed like an Easter basket. In it was an egg.

Susan: Did she tell you this story?

[music clip]

Daisy: So you know, in science class, when you’re in junior high school or high school, they give you a responsibility project? I decided just on my own, not a school project – I was 10 years old at this point – to just carry around an egg, an egg baby. So I got an egg, and I drew a little face. She had a little curl in the middle of her forehead, and I named her Egglizabeth, which was really creative. I had this tiny little basket that I filled with, literally, toilet paper. I put her in there. It was her little carriage, bassinet. So I carried her with me everywhere.

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I go to the audition, and I couldn’t leave her out in the hall because she was my egg baby. She was my responsibility. So I took her into the audition. The entire creative team …

Susan: She comes up to the desk, introduces herself; and she says, would you watch my egg. I said, sure. She puts the basket on the table with the egg in it, and she goes about to sing; and we read. I’m in love with her already because she’s so peculiar in the best possible way.

Marsha: Well, you can just imagine what that does to a table full of people who are so eager to find a real child who, at the same time, is a wizard in terms of capturing the imagination of real adults.

Heidi: She was just lovely She had the voice I wanted. She had the spirit I wanted. There was no question to me that she was going to be our Mary Lennox.

Susan: I said, Daisy, come on over here. Talk to me. I said, tell me about the egg. She goes, yes, well, I’m a failure. I said, what happened. The experiment was, you got an egg. You had to keep this egg with you all the time – in a cab, on the bus; not let it break; or if you couldn’t be with it, you had to leave it with somebody you trusted; and you had to make sure that the temperature was correct or else the egg went rotten. Well, she didn’t. Something happened to her egg. So anyway, she told this story. We were laughing so hard, and she told it with this kind of irony, this self deprecating irony, that you don’t find in children. It was so delightful and so particularly what I thought Mary Lennox needed to have.

[music clip]

Patrick: Daisy got the part. The cast was rounded out by up and comers who would go on to become some of Broadway’s biggest stars: John Cameron Mitchell, Allison Frazier, and Rebecca Luker. Cast in the role of Archibald Craven, the reclusive uncle that Mary is sent to live with after her parents’ death, was Many Patinkin. Many Patinkin was a big start at that point, best known for his Tony Award winning performance as Che in “Evita,” as George Seurat in “Sunday in the Park with George,” and as Inigo Montoya in the hit film, “The Princess Bride.” His casting was a boon for the production, but there were concerns.

How would a star of his magnitude handle being a secondary character? Then there was the fact that director Susan Schulman wasn’t even sure that he was the right actor for the job.

Susan: I thought it was an odd choice. I did, originally. I went, hm, really; not the first person that comes to mind. But I admire him tremendously; and I said, well, let me meet with him; because we’ve never worked together. Let me get

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his feelings on this show and why he wants to do it. That was really eye opening for me. We had a lovely meeting, and he was so enamored of the piece and so enamored of the story about the children. He has two sons, and they were young at the time. They were the age of the kids in the show. So he was connected to that, and he really convinced me that he was the right person for the show.

Patrick: Did he come into that meeting wanting the role?

Susan: Yes, I would say so. I wanted him to want the role, and I also wanted to make sure that he was okay with not being the lead. Are you going to be okay not being the lead? He said, no; she’s the lead. Mary’s the lead. I know that. I wanted to make sure, because he’s a star. It takes a star with a great amount of integrity and self assurance to say, no, that’s okay.

Patrick: I’ve always wondered what Daisy’s impression of Mandy Patinkin was at the time, what it was like as a kid to be working with – you know – Mandy Patinkin. So, I asked her.

Daisy: What was my impression of Many Patinkin? Well, Mandy took me to Disneyland before rehearsals started so that we could bond. We both were just in LA. I think he was there because he’s Many Patinkin. I was there with my family for vacation. I don’t know how it happened, how he knew we were there. I have no idea. But anyway, he said, I want to take Daisy to Disneyland for bonding. So we went to Disneyland, and I just sort of remember being like, I’m at Disneyland with Inigo Montoya. This is not normal.

We came across an old woman who was a hunchback. In the show he was playing a hunchback. So we followed her through the park for what was, in my mind, a half a day. It was probably 10 minutes, but it went on and on and on with him physically aping her movements. I was just mortified. I was like, we’re going to go to jail. This is terrible. We shouldn’t be doing this. Over the years, people have been like, ooh, tell me gossip about Mandy; and I …

Patrick: Me included.

Daisy: You included. I don’t have any, because I was young enough that I was being shielded from whatever gossip worthy stuff was going on. I thought he was fun. I thought he was weird. He hosted a Seder at the theater for Passover. He wore a yarmulke and did the Hebrew prayers. That was kind of strange but fun, whatever. He was just a normal person.

Patrick: With the cast in place, rehearsals began for the pre-Broadway out of town production, to be mounted at SUNY Purchase in Upstate New York. It was a program the college was starting to help Broadway bound productions get on their feet before moving into the city. They had had a lot of success the

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previous season with “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which began at Purchase and then went on to win seven Tony Awards, including best new musical. “The Secret Garden” was to be the program’s second production, but very quickly they hit a serious snag. Here’s producer Heidi Ettinger and director Susan Schulman again.

Heidi: Then the program fell apart. The program itself collapsed. So that no longer existed as a venue.

Susan: We were left, sort of, with a cast, a set that was in the shop, and no place to do it.

Patrick: So what did you do?

Susan: Well, we had a meeting with the producers, which were the Dodgers; the main producer, Dodgers, Jujamcyn; and some independent producers as well. We had a meeting, and we decided that we were close enough that we could open directly on Broadway; because to postpone now, when we had everything in line, would have been very difficult; and then to pick it back up again, get the cast back up again – all of that. So we decided to go ahead.

Patrick: With the help of the Jujamcyn Theater Organization, the production booked the St. James Theater; and the cast, which had been rehearsing for an out of town tryout, went back into rehearsals for what was now the official Broadway production of “The Secret Garden.” The pressure was on; and the fact that one of the key elements to the success or failure of this reportedly six and a half million dollar production rested squarely on the performance of their 10-year-old star, was lost on nobody – well, nobody, that is, except for the 10-year-old star.

Daisy: I had no idea of what my responsibility was, what might – you know what I mean – to me, it was like, just another fun thing I was doing. It didn’t feel like this big, massive responsibility.

Patrick: Director Susan Schulman had no doubt that Daisy was the right actor for the job, and she was confident that she knew the best way to get the performance she needed out of her.

Susan: What you need to do is find out, what is their stamina like. You can’t push beyond their personal stamina. It’s going to be different with every child, and you’ve got to develop an instinct; because kids don’t, often, want to say, I’m tired, I want to go away – not kids in theater. Kids outside of theater, maybe; but kids in theater will work ‘til they drop, in my experience. But you can’t do that. I always look in the eyes. When the computer is no longer accepting information – she would tell us. You have to sort of be ultra sensitive to that.

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Also, we had an understudy, and we had a standby; but she was going to do all the shows. She was determined to do all the shows. She had done all the shows before in other things she had done. It never entered her mind that she wouldn’t be doing all the shows. But as far as the rehearsal went, as soon as I saw that she was tiring, or she wasn’t – for me, when Daisy didn’t understand something, I knew she was tiring; because usually she understood everything.

But the other thing is, I gave her a lot of headway. I let her go a lot, because her instincts were so good, and I wanted to see what she would do, how she would react. I was never disappointed. Then if I didn’t want that, if I thought she had gone off the track somehow and wanted to go back on something, she always took direction really, really well.

I’ll tell you this one story – hilarious. I give three by five cards for notes. So the note is written down, and you get the three by five card as the actor. So obviously through the process she had gotten three by five cards. One day I knocked on her dressing room door at the St. James to give her some more notes, and she said, come in, but be very careful and very quiet. I said, okay. Not unusual for Daisy, because something was always going on. So I opened the door really quietly. She had taken all my three by five cards, and she had built a house. So there was this house of cards in the middle of her dressing room.

Of course this was her saying, see what you’ve done; look what you’ve done. It was hilarious. But there again was this sense of humor. Instead of being overwhelmed by the notes – also, she took notes better than anybody. You could give her 12 notes. She’d do every single one of them that night. She’d take every single one of them. She had an amazing ability to do that. I used to say to the adults, would you watch the kid, please.

Patrick: The show moved quickly from rehearsals into tech rehearsals. Then on April 5th, 1991, “The Secret Garden” began previews; which meant paying audiences were coming to see the show each night. The feedback from the audience was amazing. People loved it. But as everybody I talked to for this episode says, in retrospect, the fact that the audiences loved the show in previews actually worked against the show in the long run. Producer Heidi Ettinger explains.

Heidi: The show as it originally opened in Broadway had some real problems. I think if we had gone out of town with it, we would have recognized those problems and done the edits which really needed to happen, and tightened and cleaned it up. One of the reasons we weren’t given real information at that point is that the audience liked the show so much. So when the audience is so responsive, you tend to not mess with it and not be as self critical as you really should be.

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Patrick: As Marsha Norman remembers it, some people did see the problems and shared their thoughts and opinions with the creative team, which caused a strain.

Marsha: Suddenly comments are coming everywhere, and it’s very, very hard for the central creative team to hold itself together and continue to work on the show in a private way. Previews are the absolutely most dangerous period in the development of a new show, because everybody is suddenly getting input from the people they live with.

Patrick: Director Susan Schulman received the most jarring piece of feedback.

Susan: I got paranoid because I heard from some people that children would not understand. It was too sophisticated. The show was too sophisticated, and the storytelling was nonliteral; and therefore children would not understand it. We had done so much homework. Marsha and Lucy and I had done so much homework on what children understand. We had done work. So we were pretty sure that it was not that far off for a child to understand what was going on. So I took to interviewing children in the lobby. I would go up to a parent – and we had lots of kids come to previews, little kids – and I’d say to the parent, do you mind if I speak to your child, daughter.

I introduced myself, and I’d say, so, let me ask you a question. Do you know what was happening in the beginning of the show, what was going on in the beginning of the show? They said, do you mean her nightmare; and I said, yes, that’s what I mean. The kids had no problem understanding what was going on.

Patrick: The creative team was getting a lot of mixed messages. Audiences were loving the show just as it was, but people close to members of the creative team were suggesting a lot of serious and significant changes. The show officially opened on April 25th, 1991, and the critical reception mirrored this. Some news outlets loved it. Others hated it. The all important New York Times review was not favorable, calling the production cluttered and scattershot. The reviewer Frank Rich said that he often had trouble locating the show’s pulse. Here’s director Susan Schulman again.

Susan: It was sad, because I knew what the reviews were like before the show closed on opening night, before the curtain came down on opening night. I don’t recommend that to anybody, because it ruined opening night.

Patrick: I need to stop here and say that this was a real surprise to me. In all the years I’ve known Daisy Eagan, in all the conversations we’ve had about the show, even in the research I did before going into this interview with Susan Schulman, I never read the New York Times review because I just assumed it was a rave. It never occurred to me that “The Secret Garden” was badly

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reviewed. The show ran for almost two years. That’s an eternity for a new musical on Broadway. It was a hit. The New York Times review was the same then as it is now in its ability to kill a show with a bad review. So how on earth, I wondered, was the show able to survive it? Here’s Susan Schulman again.

Susan: So, it was tough; because I think we had a few days when we didn’t know what would happen. Our producers were terrific, though. They said, we are not – they came to the theater. They spoke to the company. They said, we are not closing this show. We believe in this show, and we will get through these hard times.

Heidi: All producers make a clear commitment that the show is going to run early on. I think the other producers felt that there was enough there for them to work with that they could maybe sell the show and move it forward, and that there was a preexisting audience who would really respond to the show. That wasn’t necessarily the audience who was going to look at a mediocre review from the Times and go, oh my God, I’m not going to see the show.

Patrick: This next part is astonishing to me.

Heidi: I said, okay, let’s cut the show; which is never done, because normally once it’s open, it’s frozen. But I went back, and I did put in some cuts with the actors for a couple of weeks after opening; which really helped the show.

Patrick: Just to reiterate, what Heidi is saying here is that, after the show opened, she called the actors back into rehearsal to tweak the show; mostly to make it shorter, which was the overriding criticism the creative team was getting during previews. I have never heard of this in another show. Tweaking a show in a major way like that after opening is something that just isn’t done. But what I think it shows is that everyone involved loved the show they were working on. They knew it wasn’t finished. They wanted to make it better. They wanted the show to live.

Heidi says that the cast’s willingness to keep working was not only beneficial to the show but also to the morale of the company as a whole.

Heidi: I think the fact that the cast was in there, improving the show, was, on a certain level, psychologically helpful; because that also indicated to them that the producers really were going to try to run this. They weren’t just blowing smoke like many producers do. They really were going to give it a shot; and part of this effort was going to be to take this existing show and tighten it up. I don’t think we threw out whole scenes, but there was just a lot of internal trimming and cutting and tightening that needed to happen and should have been done before we opened.

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When I tried to put in these cuts before we opened, I’d gotten a lot of resistance from the creative team – a lot. But you run out of time. There are so many other issues to deal with. So we, in fact, ran a show which was not exactly the show that we opened.

Patrick: And it worked.

Susan: This show ran for two seasons because the audience loved the show. Men, women, grandmothers, children – it became a date show, which was very interesting, too.

Patrick: Because of this enthusiasm, Heidi Ettinger told me, the show also benefitted from tremendous positive word of mouth. Of course there was the fact that, a month after “The Secret Garden” opened, it was nominated for seven Tony Awards; which included best costume design; best scenic design for Heidi Ettinger, who had designed the set in addition to producing the show; best book of a musical for Marsha Norman; best original score for Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman; the all important best new musical; best featured actress for Allison Frazier; and best featured actress for Daisy Eagan.

It should be noted that everyone, then and now, agrees that Daisy was the lead of “The Secret Garden;” and in fact, for other awards that season, like The Drama Desk, Daisy had been nominated as the leading actress. However, the Tony Awards allow producers some flexibility in terms of categories they put their actors up for. 1991 was also the year “Miss Saigon” debuted on Broadway. The show and its leading actress were cleaning up during awards season. I wanted to ask Heidi Ettinger if that had contributed to their decision about Daisy’s category.

Can you talk about the decision to put Daisy in the supporting category?

Heidi: It must have been about the competition. Who was she up against?

Patrick: Lea Salonga.

Heidi: That’s why. That’s the reason. That’s easy.

Patrick: Going into the night, did you expect Daisy to win?

Heidi: Yes. Yes.

Patrick: Daisy wasn’t so sure.

Daisy: I’ll tell you that somebody told me – and I want to say it was Rebecca Luker, and I might be wrong about this – but the very first readthrough, she turned to whoever was next to her and was like, that girl is going to win a Tony Award.

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I’m telling you – and this is the God’s honest truth – it never occurred to me; never occurred to me. I also remember going to lunch one day with Allison and John Babcock and maybe somebody else. They were talking about who was going to be nominated. They were like, well, John Cameron Mitchell’s obviously going to be nominated; obviously Mandy’s going to be nominated; and I think she said me. I was like, that’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Let’s not be silly.

Patrick: Do you remember finding out that you got nominated for a Tony Award?

Daisy: What do they do it on – a Tuesday morning? I feel like they do it on a Tuesday morning. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I was home. I guess I was probably going to be going to school. I remember being up. We got a phone call. I think my agent told my mom, and then she said, Daisy, come to the phone, and he told me. I think I just yelled and screamed through the house. My mom was really careful to be like, look, the chances of you winning this are very low. They don’t give Tony Awards to children. Be grateful that you were nominated.

Patrick: The Tony Awards were held on Sunday, June 2nd, 1991, at the Minskoff Theater.

Male Voice: Tonight, live from the Minskoff Theater on Broadway, the 1991 Tony Awards; hosted by the legendary star of Broadway’s “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot,” Miss Julie Andrews.

Patrick: Daisy’s parents were given seats in the balcony, and Daisy’s older sister was her escort and seatmate.

Daisy: I remember we got to the theater, and my sister was wearing my propeller hat. It was a beanie with a colored propeller on it. They would not let her wear it. We were like, fascists! I remember being there. I remember being overwhelmed. I remember feeling like, I don’t know how any of this works. They told me – I think I’d gone to some sort of rehearsal. We were performing that night, too; so I brought my stuffed rabbit, [Harold]. Yes. So, that’s what I remember from it.

Male Voice: Ladies and Gentleman, Miss Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey: The nominees for best featured actress in a musical are … Daisy Eagan, “Secret Garden …”

Patrick: What was going through your mind when your category was announced?

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Daisy: Honestly, probably, smile when the camera is on you; or, you’re not going to win – just hearing my mom’s voice. You’re not going to win. You’re not going to win.

Audrey: And the Tony Award goes to Daisy Eagan.

Patrick: And then when they called your name …

Daisy: I couldn’t believe it. If you go back and look at it, I honestly am in honest to goodness shock.

I don’t think I can talk. Oh my God. Oh …

Male Voice: We love you, Daisy!

Daisy: Thank you. I’d like to thank Heidi, Marsha and Lucy, and Susan Schulman, for being so wonderful. I’d like to thank [unintelligible 00:38:14]. I’d like to thank the marvelous company for being so wonderful, especially Allison Frazier and John Babcock. Thank you Jessica and Amelia. Thank you, my wonderful agent, Frances DelDuca. Thanks, mom, and dad. Thank you for being so wonderful to me. Thank you especially to Molly, my sister, and [Harold] and all the guys in room 402. Thanks.

Daisy: I could not believe it. I walked offstage, and a stage manager came and took my Tony Award. I literally thought it was already being rescinded. I had done something. Something in my speech disqualified me. I was like, what are you doing; and they were like, we have to take this and engrave your name. Oh, okay. Then another stage manager came up to me and said, oh, I was chatting with – oh my God – I was chatting with Lily Tomlin backstage. I was telling her how much I loved her, how much I loved Edith Ann and Ernestine. She said, oh, I’ll send you a tape; and she did. God, it’s so surreal.

Then another stage manager came up to me and said, you have to go to the press conference across the street. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t across the street. It was probably literally upstairs, in the Marriott, because we were at the Minskoff; but in my mind, I was going to have to go out and find this conference, this press conference, by myself, at night, in this dress; and then get back to the theater to do the performance. I honestly couldn’t think of how that was going to work or the logistics of it. I got really freaked out, and I said, I don’t have to do that; I’m just a kid. I literally was like, I’m going to go out into New York by myself – not that I hadn’t taken the subway by myself and stuff. But it just felt different, in this dress that I’m wearing.

It’s weird that nobody – they must have just been, like, all right, she’s freaked out; but somebody easily could have just been like, no, I’m going to escort you and take you. I promise you won’t be left alone. I think it was also – I

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don’t know that it is good for me to be interviewed without a supervisor there, you know what I mean? I think most other interviews I did, at least somebody was there. So I think there was a part of me that was like, I don’t know – something felt wrong to me about it. Also, nobody had sat me down and been like, here’s how the night’s going to go.

So, yes, I didn’t do the press conference; which, in retrospect – I like to say that everything in my life had to go exactly the way it did in order for me to have my son, who is a miracle human. But I think my career would have been a lot different, because the internet wasn’t around then. We didn’t have Twitter. We didn’t have Facebook. We didn’t have Snapchat. We didn’t have any of that stuff. So that was my opportunity to get in front of the national spotlight, because not everybody watches the Tony Awards. I was precocious, and I was spunky; and I’m sure I would have said things that made them laugh, and I would have been me.

I just have fantasies. Who are the Miramax dudes?

Patrick: The Weinsteins.

Daisy: Yes. I had fantasies that the Weinsteins would see me on the 11:00 news and be like, we’re going to write a TV show for her – you know what I mean? That’s a star. Natalie Portman who? But alas, it wasn’t my fate.

Patrick: “The Secret Garden” won three Tony Awards that night; including best scenic design for Heidi Ettinger, best book of a musical for Marsha Norman, and best featured actress in a musical for Daisy Eagan. Daisy stayed with the show for about a year. She would go on to costar in the Broadway production of James Joyce’s “The Dead,” the off-Broadway production of “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” and several television shows and films. I can vouch for the fact that her son is a miracle human. I’d just like to add that she’s also a miracle mom.

“The Secret Garden” had an incredibly successful first national tour, which played dozens of cities in the US in its more than two-year run. Subsequently professional productions played in Australia and in the UK, solidifying the show’s status as an international hit; and after decades of regional and amateur productions, “The Secret Garden” has become one of the most produced American musicals of our time.

[music clip from “The Secret Garden”]

Stay tuned after the credits for scenes from our next episode, which uncovers the backstory of “The 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” Just a reminder that, if you’re in the Washington DC area, don’t miss the chance to see Tony winner Daisy Eagan return to her roots in “The Secret Garden.” Check out TodayTix for great deals on tickets; and “Broadway Backstory”

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listeners can use the code, “backstory,” for $15 off your first purchase. Remember, anyone can discover new musicals, plays, comedies, operas, ballets, and dramas in your city at the best prices with TodayTix. So download the TodayTix app for free on IOS and Android, or visit todaytix.com to see what’s playing this week and treat yourself to a show.

You guys, if you’re enjoying “Broadway Backstory,” can we ask you a favor? Will you take a quick minute to rate and review us on iTunes? It really does help other people find our show. Also, consider sharing our episodes on your Facebook or Twitter to help spread the word. “Broadway Backstory” is a partnership between TodayTix and Theater People podcast. Episodes are produced, mixed, and edited by me, Patrick Hinds. Please follow us on Facebook where we’re at “Broadway Backstory,” and Twitter, where we’re @bwaybackstory. You can also follow me on Twitter. I’m @patrickhinds. Special thanks for the invaluable production help from Steve Tipton, Mike Jenson, Rickie Condos, Chloe O’Connor, Chloe [Lindt], and Matt Tamanini.

Female Voice: I was also reading this book at the same time called “Bee Season” by Myla Goldberg. and the idea kind of dropped into my lap: Oh, what if we did a spelling bee; and adults played kids, and we create our own characters?

Female Voice: I was nannying at that time for Wendy Wasserstein. So she came down to see it. It was really because of her. She put us in touch with Bill Finn.

Female Voice: Bill said, sure, I’d like to meet with these guys. So Jay and I went to his summer house.

Female Voice: I called Bill, and I said, hey, do you have anything you want to do at Barrington in the coming summer.

Male Voice: He said, do you want to do this, and I said, yes. He said, don’t you want to read it. I said, I would love to read it; but you just said Bill Finn and a musical about a spelling bee; and the answer is yes.

Female Voice: We had auditions. This was probably the most painful thing. I didn’t get the role. I got kicked out of my own musical.

Female Voice: At Second Stage there’s a green room where, I think, we were all sitting. They called us into the main rehearsal room, and David Stone was like, so, you guys, I just wanted to let you know that we’re going to move the show to Broadway; and it’s going to be at a theater called Circle in the Square, and it will be a very different setup than this one. But we’ll – it’s going to make me cry. I just had a flash of calling my dad after it and being like, we’re going to Broadway.

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Male Voice: It was funny. The night the New York Times came, we had a woman we could not get offstage. At that point we had no bogus word. So after that, I said, we’re going to make up a word; and no matter what they spell, we’re going to ring them out …

Patrick: Next time on “Broadway Backstory.”

[music clip]

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