Dylan Mulvaney talks the ‘unkind’ criticism of her being trans Broadway star
Dylan Mulvaney. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for GLAAD)
Dylan Mulvaney has opened up about being a trans Broadway star, including some of the less kind comments she has received around her voice.
Speaking in a Get Ready With Me-style video posted to her social media channels on 24 April, the actress shared what it’s like to be cast in a long-running Broadway musical as a trans person.
Mulvaney has been starring as Anne Boleyn in historical pop concert show Six the Musical, which tells the story of each of Henry VIII’s six wives, for the last two months.
The announcement regarding her casting was met with significant backlash, largely from right-wing groups, with many people calling the casting decision “woke” and others saying that the role of Anne Boleyn should have gone to someone assigned female at birth.
In the video, Mulvaney said that she is “having the time of [her] life” starring in the show.
“I’m filming this today from a place of abundance and not scarcity because some days I do not feel so great about myself but I’ve had some really good shows lately,” she continued.
“Little by little, I think the industry is realising that when you make an effort to include someone with a different life experience it can give a character such a fresh and nuanced perspective,” she said, adding that she hopes she is doing that with Anne Boleyn.
She went on to explain that “the biggest hurdle for trans people in musicals is changing the keys”, and that she sings the majority of the songs for Six in the original key except for her solo, “Don’t Lose Your Head”.
“Lucy [Moss] and Toby [Marlow] who wrote Six made it very clear that these were songs that could be sung by many different voice types. As long as the story was being told, it shouldn’t matter what key it was in,” she said.
“I want to give them their flowers, because we really need more writers giving their blessing to casting trans people.”
Mulvaney also shared some of the criticism she received earlier on in the show’s run, specifically around a small moment in the show where she sings a snippet of “Don’t Lose Your Head” in the original key as part of a larger reprise performance with the rest of the cast.
“When I started in February I was seeing comments from our first night where people were saying very unkind things about my singing and it took me a long time to realise that those people weren’t actually seeing me in the show,” she explained.
“They were basing their opinions on a very small clip on the internet and they made me really hate that moment in the show,” Mulvaney said, referencing the reprise at the end of the show.
“I’m really glad to have taken back my power and I’m not really interested in criticism unless it’s coming from someone who is sitting in that theatre, seeing the show in its entirety and not just from a 16-second bootleg on TikTok.”
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