CLINTON HILL — Some people move to New York City with dreams of someday making it to Broadway. For Lauren Patten, it was the other way around; making it on Broadway moved her to New York City.
Now, the theater and television actor is a “Midwest kid living in NYC,” according to her Instagram. The actor currently stars on Broadway in “Becky Shaw,” a play by Gina Gionfriddo and directed by Trip Cullman at the Second Stage Theater.
In 2015, Patten was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, when she flew across the country to be the standby for the role of Medium Alison in Alison Bechdel’s musical “Fun Home” on Broadway.
“I was very settled in LA, but I’ve always been the most connected to New York as a person,” Patten told the Brooklyn Eagle. “Once I was working on Broadway and living here, I quickly realized that there was no way that it was going to go back to LA.”
Patten moved to New York and never left. In early 2016, she transitioned into the role of Medium Alison full-time while original actor Emily Skeggs was away on a television project.
“The word family is used a lot in theater, and I find it to be a little bit of a cliche,” she said. “With ‘Fun Home,’ we became like a family, and we all still feel that way about each other over a decade later.”
The last-minute move to New York launched Patten’s career in theater and television. She was cast in Sarah DeLappe’s off-Broadway play “The Wolves.” That same year, she joined the cast of the first reading of the Alanis Morissette jukebox musical “Jagged Little Pill.” In 2018, she joined the cast of “Blue Bloods” as Officer Rachel Witten, a role she played for several years.
Lauren Patten, who currently plays Suzanna in “Becky Shaw” on Broadway. Photo: Jenny Anderson
In fall 2019, “Jagged Little Pill” premiered on Broadway with Patten in the role of Jo. Though the pandemic shut the show down in March 2020, Patten went on to win a Tony Award for Best Performance of a Featured Actress, one of two awards the show took home that year.
“It was actually really beautiful in a way,” Patten said. “It was strange because of all the pandemic stuff, but it also became an event to televise, showing the country that theater was coming back. It was a very emotional night.”
Now, Patten plays Suzanna, a grieving, impulsive 30-something, in “Becky Shaw.” Gionfriddo’s black comedy, which is loosely about a blind date gone bad, had its world premiere in 2008 and made its Broadway debut this spring. “Becky Shaw” runs through June 14.
“I found Suzanna so fascinating right away because she is delightfully not archetypal. You know women like her — indecisive, needs somebody else to be taking care of her, but also kind of dominating and abrasive — that sort of push and pull. I don’t see women like that on stage a whole lot,” Patten said.