{"id":27021,"date":"2025-11-03T17:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T17:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/27021\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T17:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T17:14:15","slug":"miss-america-meets-the-queen-of-versailles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/27021\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss America Meets the Queen of Versailles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doors open when you\u2019re Miss America. For instance, did you know that the famously hundred-and-two-floor Empire State Building actually has a not so famous hundred-and-third? \u201cThere\u2019s this little ladder to get up there, and it was literally, like, a ledge,\u201d Cassie Donegan, who was crowned Miss America in September, said the other day. \u201cBut it was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind another such door: the velvet-seated V.I.P. lounge hidden in the St. James Theatre, in midtown, where Donegan was sipping a Diet Coke and sitting beside a bespoke Niki Lassiter handbag with a poofy pink strap. Or perhaps she\u2019d have found another way in; the star of the night\u2019s show, Kristin Chenoweth, is a pal from musical-theatre circles. A few months ago, Chenoweth sent Donegan, who has starred in regional productions of \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d and \u201cCarrie,\u201d a video of herself offering encouragement before a competition. \u201cShe\u2019d kill me for sharing this, but she had the flu and was just dying,\u201d Donegan said. \u201cI watched it on repeat before the Miss New York finals, and then again before Miss America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chenoweth\u2019s new musical, \u201cThe Queen of Versailles,\u201d based on Lauren Greenfield\u2019s 2012 documentary of the same name, tells the story of Jackie Siegel, a former Mrs. Florida winner who married a time-share magnate and set out to build the largest private home in the United States: a fourteen-bed, thirty-bath mansion, in Orlando, Florida, modelled on the Palace of Versailles. (Also part of the design: an observation deck to watch Disney World\u2019s fireworks.) Then the 2008 financial crash hit. Construction halted, and things veered more toward \u201cGrey Gardens.\u201d By the end, Siegel\u2019s husband was lambasting his family for leaving the lights on, lest the utility bill creep higher.<\/p>\n

Donegan, who is twenty-eight, grew up in small-town Virginia, in a family that owned an assortment of local businesses\u2014a tobacco farm, a mechanic shop, an electricity company. \u201cI remember hearing the impacts of those financial fluctuations,\u201d she said, of the aughts recession. \u201cBut I was eleven. I didn\u2019t really log a lot of that.\u201d She does not have Siegel\u2019s residential ambitions. Donegan now lives in Sunnyside, Queens, in a garden-level one-bedroom that she shares with two dogs. \u201cI got an incredible freaking deal,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I have a leasing office, so, if there\u2019s a problem, someone actually answers the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a><\/p>\n

Cartoon by Frank Cotham<\/p>\n

Showtime approached. Donegan, who wore a black dress with a crisscrossed neckline and a black bomber draped over her shoulders, made her way to an orchestra seat. Some two hours later, after Chenoweth, in a series of eye-popping ensembles and animal prints, sang of \u201cAmerican royalty\u201d and \u201ccaviar dreams,\u201d Donegan rose to join the standing ovation. Most of the audience filed out. Stephen Schwartz, the musical\u2019s composer, and Winnie Holzman, Schwartz\u2019s collaborator on \u201cWicked,\u201d shook a few nearby hands.<\/p>\n

Several minutes later, Chenoweth reappeared onstage, in a black Blondie sweatshirt and untied white sparkly sneakers. She rushed to hug Donegan, then gestured apologetically toward her own throat\u2014vocal rest. \u201cNo, I get it\u2014you just ran a marathon,\u201d Donegan said. The two whispered their greetings, then scooted over to the set\u2019s faux-marble staircase for a photo. Chenoweth cheerily waved over the rest of the cast for a group shot, and a handler produced Donegan\u2019s Miss America sash and tiara. She tried to secure the tiara atop her strawberry-blond hair. \u201cI don\u2019t have any pins,\u201d she said with a frown, then shrugged. \u201cI\u2019ll just balance it.\u201d A cast member asked what Donegan had done for the pageant\u2019s talent portion. \u201cI sing,\u201d she said, drawing a few oohs.<\/p>\n

On the way out, as a staffer closed down the merch stand and the lobby bars\u2019 slushy machines quietly hummed, Donegan brought up the lyric about caviar dreams. \u201cSo often we pray and hope and dream for things,\u201d she said. \u201cThen you wake up and you realize that day that you\u2019re in the middle of what you hoped and prayed and dreamed for.\u201d She considered her own career. The goal, still, was to be on Broadway herself. In the meantime, things were pretty good. \u201cI distinctly remember being in my bedroom in middle school and thinking that being a working, professional actor was so far away,\u201d she said. \u201cThe reality is, I can pay my bills just being an actor, and that\u2019s not a reality for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The caviar could wait. \u201cI won Miss America in a wardrobe that probably cost less than a thousand dollars in total,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be the Queen of Versailles to be the Queen of Versailles, you know?\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doors open when you\u2019re Miss America. For instance, did you know that the famously hundred-and-two-floor Empire State Building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1472,9,24,63,122,124,123,11004,17020],"class_list":{"0":"post-27021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-magazine","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-queens","13":"tag-queens-headlines","14":"tag-queens-news","15":"tag-splitscreenimageleftinset","16":"tag-the-boards"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}