• February 24, 2003
• Vol. 59
• No. 7

Show Popper

Kristin Chenoweth Sings into Action on ABC's New Music Man with a Voice That Could Shush 76 Trombones

Growing up in Broken Arrow, Okla., where the closest thing to the bright lights of Broadway was touring musicals, Kristin Chenoweth figured her route to stardom was Miss America. "I wanted to sing and be on national TV," says Chenoweth, who'd been belting out Judy Garland numbers for her family since age 9. She got as far as second runner-up in the 1991 Miss Oklahoma pageant. But at 4'11", she says, "I'm not your typical pageant girl. I was like a Barbie doll with an attitude."

Call her Broadway Barbie. In the past three years Chenoweth, 34, has won a Tony for playing Sally in a revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and released an album of pop and show tunes, Let Yourself Go. Now she's starring with Matthew Broderick in ABC's Feb. 16 remake of The Music Man. "She's a triple threat as an actor, singer and dancer," says Broderick, who plays flimflam charmer Harold Hill to her librarian Marian Peroo. "And she does a really good Dolly Parton impersonation."

But she preferred opera to the Opry. The only daughter of Jerry, 60, an oil-company exec, and June, 58, a home-maker, Chenoweth won an opera scholarship to Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts before moving to Manhattan in 1994 to pursue a stage career. Last year she even dated a classical musician, violinist Joshua Bell. ("We had a deep connection, and I miss him in my life that way.") This fall she'll return to Broadway as Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked, a musical based on Wizard of Oz characters. "Only this Glinda is not so good—that's what's fun," says Chenoweth, who has a mischievous side herself. When a mosquito alit on Broderick's neck on the set last summer, she slapped the sucker dead. "There was blood on my finger," she says. "Matthew should thank me. I could've let it get him, but I decided to go for the kill."