Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. Coming up on today's show, poems from the mother of Kalief Browder form the basis of a new documentary. Filmmaker Sisa Bueno joins us to discuss For Venida, For Kalief, which is screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. Plus, we'll learn about a new book called Sick and Dirty that explores the period known as the golden age of Hollywood despite its draconian censorship under the Hays Code.

Canadian rock band, The Beaches, will be at Governors Ball this weekend. First, they'll stop by our studio to perform live songs from their forthcoming album. That's the plan. Let's get this started with Boop! The Musical.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: You and Me]

Alison Stewart: If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. That's what happened to Jasmine Amy Rogers when she auditioned for the musical Boop! First time, she was not called back, but she studied, she tried some new things, and when she saw the role had not been cast, she asked to audition again. Now, she's a Tony nominee for her role as Betty Boop.

In Boop! The Musical, Betty just wants a little vacation. She's a big star in her universe as a two-dimensional woman. When she's asked by a reporter who is the real Betty Boop her two-dimensional self is left wondering what the answer is. With some help from her fellow cartoon characters, she goes through space and time to wind up in the three-dimensional present at Comic-Con. She is mesmerized by life in the big city and all the big colors and feelings that real life can bring, including love.

The reviews for Boop! have one thing in common. Everyone thinks that Jasmine Amy Rogers is great. The reviews use words like triple threat and sensational. Her 11th-hour number leads to a standing ovation. Here's Jasmine Amy Rogers singing Something To Shout About.

[MUSIC - Jasmine Amy Rogers: Something To Shout About]

Some days

I am in doubt about

Whether to get up or not

Nothing entices me

Nothing amazes me

Unless it's scripted

And I'm in the shot

I have

Nothing to pout about

Listen to me, gee whiz

But God, I want

Something to shout about

Stand on my head about

Drag the flag out about

I want

Something to shout about

Whatever it is

Alison Stewart: Jasmine Amy Rogers, welcome to the studio.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Hi, thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: I want to take you back to that day of your first audition for Boop! What do you remember about that day?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I was so nervous. I didn't know what to expect. The first time, I did the singing and the dancing, that was all great. When it came down to the dancing-- No, sorry. I did the singing and the scenes, and those went great. When it came to the dancing, I was so, so nervous. I knew I had to tap, and I hadn't done that in a long time. When I did it, Jerry Mitchell, our director and choreographer, he said it sounded like someone dropped a handful of silverware on the floor.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes. I love him dearly, so it's okay now.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes, it was a mess. I've never wanted to walk out of an audition before. That day, I really did. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: How did you pick yourself up from that moment? That's a really tough moment.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: It was hard. I think it was easier because I had a job to go back to. I was on the tour of Mean Girls, national tour, as Gretchen. I came to New York, I auditioned, it didn't go well, and I went right back to work. I had a distraction. Thankfully, once I came back to the city and I found out they were still looking, I got back in there. Yes, it was tough.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn from that experience?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: At that time, I learned how important preparation was. When I came to my prep for that initial call, I had procrastinated, kind of brushing up on my tap because I was so afraid of it. I learned definitely that you can't do that. You have to prepare absolutely fully.

Alison Stewart: What made you decide to ask to audition again?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: On that first audition, I keep going back to it because it crushed me, truly. I never will forget going home that day and laying in my bed and crying. My agents called, and they were like, "It's not going to go your way." I felt so defeated. Not just because it hadn't gone well, but because I had built it up in my heart and my soul that this was the role for me. To walk away knowing that it wasn't crushed me.

When it came back around and they were still looking, I still had that feeling. I was like, "No, something's wrong. This is where I'm supposed to be. This is what I'm supposed to be doing." I just couldn't get rid of that feeling. When I heard them auditioning in a studio in Manhattan, I immediately was like, "I need this, I need this, I need this." I called my agent up and I was like, "Can I please get back in the room?" They said, "Yes." I just had that feeling in my soul and my gut that I needed to be doing it.

Alison Stewart: Once you got the part, how do you start to research Betty Boop?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Luckily, there's so much source material for Betty because all of her shorts are on the Internet, they're on YouTube. I was doing a lot of watching, a lot of reading up on her history, and where she comes from, and who she was, and who the Fleischers were, and why she was created in the first place. It was just a lot of deep dive. It kind of felt like when you're in high school and you have to write a paper and you have to go into the library and look at all these things. It was kind of like that.

Alison Stewart: When you play her, you play her as a feminist.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: What's feminist about Betty Boop?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Well, Betty always, from her inception, was this independent woman who did whatever she wanted to, when she wanted to. She could do anything. She could do any job, hold any job, entertain. She never really had family or anything like that, but she took care of others. She was just the epitome of, "I'm a woman, I can do anything. I'm capable of anything." Her motto is, "I'm capable of amazing things." It was very apparent to me, and to the Fleischers as well, that Betty was truly one of the first feminists on television in that way.

Alison Stewart: How did you decide on the voice that you would use? You also decide on one that people could listen to for two hours.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes, that was a very big part of it.

Alison Stewart: That's a big part of it, because you listen initially, you're like, "I don't know if I could listen to the cartoons."

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: "Could I listen to this for two hours?" How did you develop her voice?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I went to the original source material, obviously, and I grabbed onto all of that bubbly, light, almost childlike voice mannerisms, and I just put it in my own voice. You can probably hear it's early for me as a singer. My voice is a lot raspier and lower than Betty's. My Betty voice sits a little lower and it's a little raspier, but it all sits in that little pocket that she has, and that's where the truth of her voice lies. I just combined the two. I think it made her a little bit more human, a little bit more grounded in the voice, because the shorts, you're only getting her for a couple minutes, but this is two and a half hours, obviously, so it makes it a lot easier to listen to, I think.

Alison Stewart: What did you pick up from watching the shorts about her mannerisms that you could, not imitate, but that you can embody?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: The Fleischer cartoons are so specific in the way that they depicted movement. The Fleischers created the rotoscope, which was a brand-new way of animating. It allowed for very fluid movement, which we hadn't seen in cartoons at the time. There's a lot of human aspects to the way that they move. They based her movement off of people, but there's also just like an elasticity to the way she moves and a sharpness to the way she does things. I always think about the way she holds her hands. Early cartoons, the early drawings, her hands weren't fully formed, like her fingers. I do a lot of displaying with my hands.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: That honestly helps a lot into the physicalization. She moves a little bit like a princess, a little more spastic than that, but she holds herself in a way that sometimes I think of a princess might. That's in there, too. It's so iconic what the Fleischers did, that, honestly, it feels easy to emulate because it is so specific.

Alison Stewart: You can see it in the curtain call.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, really?

Alison Stewart: Because you come off the top of the stairs and you kick your foot out-

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I do. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: -and you go down the stairs. I was like, "Down to the end of the show-

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: -she's Betty Boop."

Jasmine Amy Rogers: That's something I just started doing, and I wasn't aware of it until I saw a picture. I was like, "Oh, I do. I do that every night."

Alison Stewart: What was something that was hard about nailing Betty Boop?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Truthfully, it was still that movement. When I first got the role, I was in pre-production rehearsals. We call it pre-pro with Rachelle Rak. She's our dance associate, one of our choreography associates. She basically taught me how to walk, truly how to walk, period. She taught me how to stand and to walk because Betty is obviously known for being sexy as well as this cartoon character that sex appeal is a big part of who she is. It's not all of who she is, obviously.

I never stood in myself the way that Betty would. There's a confidence that she has and a sultriness to the way she moves, and Rachelle really had to teach me how to do that. It was really hard for me. There's a confidence that's needed to do it, and I had to retrain my brain to just be comfortable moving in that way.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jasmine Amy Rogers. She's starring as Betty Boop in the Broadway musical Boop! She's nominated for a Tony Award. You're working with some of the best in theater, Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell, who directed. He's also nominated for choreography for this show. What's a piece of advice that he gave you as a director, and what's a piece of advice he gave you as a choreographer?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, my goodness. I'll start with the choreography because Jerry is amazing in this way, and he's learned from the best of the best in this industry. He is really big on, "We're going to make the choreography look good on your body." It's, "What do you need for this to feel right in you? You are the artist, you are the person that is making this role. What can we do to make you shine?" Just knowing that was really great advice.

There's a way to jump into anything that will work for you, which is really, really lovely. As a director, I think he really encouraged me to be myself creating Betty. For them, finding Betty was really hard because they needed to find somebody who could bring the cartoon to life but also ground her in reality. There's this fine line between those two spaces. What I learned from him was that I was the right vessel to do that, because it's kind of just the way I move through my own life. He really encouraged me to just be Jasmine. That has been life-changing in the show and for my life, just the way I move through my day-to-day.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you, what advice did it give you about life as being number one on the call sheet?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Just to trust myself and that what I'm doing behind the scenes matters, the way that I lead the cast. Ainsley Melham, who plays Dwayne, my opposite, my love interest in the show, he and I are very-- we're just very happy to be here.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I think it's very apparent. Ainsley's done some amazing work. He was Aladdin on Broadway. He did it in Australia as well. We just want to do the work, and we want to have a good time, and we want to share our love for the work that we do with everybody. I think it really shapes the environment that we all work in. We come into work and we have a great time, and we all really love each other, truly. It was nice that Jerry was like, "You're a great actress," or whatever, all this. Off the stage, he said, "I'm really proud of the woman that you are." That's really special because I've known Jerry since I was 20, and I'm 26, so it means a lot.

Alison Stewart: What's something that you didn't know about being in a Broadway show that you know now?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, my goodness. Just how hard it is. I knew it was hard, but I couldn't have imagined what it would feel like. It's exhausting in the most wonderful way, obviously, but it is so tiring. Not just for the people that are on stage, but the people offstage. I mean, the work that the crew is putting in backstage at the Broadhurst is incredible. There's so many moving pieces. It just never ends. Sometimes you have to take those moments off for yourself, but more importantly, for the show, the integrity of the show.

There you are, putting on this piece for this audience. The audience deserves to have your 100%. There are days when you don't have your 100%. You need to step away. I've learned that that's okay, too. That's been very hard for me. I love being there, but I've learned to take care of myself and how much just goes into this beast that we put on every night.

Alison Stewart: We were talking before we went on air how you're not wearing heels.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Today? No.

Alison Stewart: No heels.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I was like, "I can't." I was in PT, physical therapy, yesterday. We have somebody in the house. His name is Steven. He takes care of us so well. Yesterday, I was like, "My calves are just there. They've had it." This morning when I got up, I was like, "I cannot put on a heel. I won't put on a heel." It's lovely. I'm at this little desk here with my little flats on. It's amazing.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I'm Talking to Jasmine Amy Rogers. She plays Betty Boop in Boop! The Musical. Okay, so Betty, she's not sure of who she is at the beginning of this show. Why is she so unsure?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I think like the rest of us, we get into this every day, we get into the pattern of our everyday life. Betty has been doing it for almost 100 years. She's in her little cartoon world and she realizes, "I've played so many of these roles that I forgot who Betty is. I forgot who I am. When I come home, when they turn off the cameras, who is Betty?" I think it's just like that age-old thing of, "Oh my gosh, I've gotten so used to the lull of this every day that I forgot to ask what makes me happy, what makes me."

Alison Stewart: There's a song where Betty is told by the young woman in the show when she gets fast-forwards to 2025 about how great she is and Betty can do anything. Your reaction when you are listening to it is you're nervous about it. You're sitting on the bed, you're going through it, you're listening to her talk about how great you are. I was really interested in the direction that Jerry gave you for that song because you look like, "Oh my gosh, this girl's singing about me, and I'm not so sure."

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Right. I think it's that there's a horrifying moment for Betty where she just wanted to come here and have this day off and this young girl is in love with her. She feels awful because she's lying to her and telling her that she's someone else. It just feels very untrue to Betty to hold this secret from this young girl. Hearing about yourself in that way can be very, very scary, especially when you don't feel worthy of that praise.

I think she's having that moment where she's like, "Oh my goodness, this young woman has all these lovely things to say about me. I am lying to her and I can't hide. I can't hide from this. I can't hide from myself." She's like, "How can she feel all these things about me when I can't even feel them about myself? I don't even know this about myself." Jerry just was-- we were having that moment where you're like, "What does it feel like to receive praise and not feel worthy of praise, but also be so inspired by what you're hearing from this young woman?"

It's so many things that Betty is going through in that moment. She's experiencing all of these, straight out of the gate, things she's never really thought about, had to think about before. It's really an interesting moment for her.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk to you about working with a puppet. [laughs]

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, my gosh. Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. There's a puppet on stage. It's by a very distinguished puppet performer. Phillip Huber plays your dog. The audience is all in.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, all in.

Alison Stewart: All in.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: What have you learned about playing against a puppet?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Honestly, it doesn't feel very crazy to do. Phillip is such an incredible artist in the fact that sometimes you forget Phillip is there. You do. You see Pudgy. Pudgy is a scene partner through and through. The only thing I had to adjust to was just making sure, because he's so small, just making sure that I'm seeing that he's there. Oh, my gosh, I love Pudgy. I'll never forget the first time we saw him. We all just stared at Pudgy because it was like, "That thing is alive."

Phillip was just master of his craft, just controlling this dog. It's incredible. Sometimes you'll have conversations with Phillip backstage, and he has Pudgy and is reacting with Pudgy as we're talking to Phillip. It's easy, honestly, to act with him because he's such a complete scene partner. He's so involved.

Alison Stewart: That 11th-hour number that we played at the top of the show really shows the power of your voice. It's really-

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: -well placed in the show. You're welcome. I was curious how you wanted to present that moment, because it is your moment in the show.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes. It's this tricky moment because it is different for a musical to have an I-want song at the end.

Alison Stewart: It is, yes.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Betty goes through this entire journey. She figures out that she wants these things for herself for the first time, and they're immediately ripped away from her. She's kind of going through these emotions of like, "Oh, my goodness, I had this thing. I want this thing, and it's gone. I was so close. I was so close that I still want it. I want it, I want it, but it's gone." I just wanted to have it be, and Jerry also, we wanted it to be her most real moment.

The whole show, Betty is a cartoon, obviously, but she goes on this journey where she transforms into almost a person, like a real girl. This was that moment where we're saying Betty is a real woman with wants and needs and real emotions. She is fully 3D. She is fleshed out. That was just that raw emotion we wanted to deliver with this song. It's a David Foster song with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, and they just really nailed it. It is just heart-wrenching, honestly, to sing. The audience is experiencing that as well, and it's incredible.

Alison Stewart: When did you want to be a singer?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, my goodness. As soon as I could talk.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Jasmine Amy Rogers: My father says before I could talk, that I would sing. My father sang. He's since passed away. He passed away last summer. He always sang. It was always his dream that I'd be a singer. I've always sung. I used to sit in my bedroom and sing along to the Disney Princess soundtrack by myself. My mom would say, "I thought that was the radio playing," and it was me. It's always been in me. I've always wanted to sing.

Alison Stewart: What was your first professional encounter?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Professional? M first professional encounter was with Jerry Mitchell. I did Becoming Nancy. In 2019, we went to the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and we did that show. I was supporting lead. I played Frances Bassey. It's like the sassy best friend. So full of life and so full of energy. My mom said, from that experience, she said, "Jerry's going to bring you to Broadway." I was like, "Okay, Mom, but he did." That was my first professional gig, and it was amazing.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jasmine Amy Rogers. She's starring as Betty Boop in Boop! The Musical. She's nominated for a Tony. All right, you're in this category with these amazing, amazing actors. Nicole Scherzinger, Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Audra McDonald. You're the youngest woman in this category. It's very exciting.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What would you want the rest of the women to know?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, my goodness. Just that their work is so important in that I've watched them for so long and I wouldn't be here without them. All of them, truly, especially Audra as a Black woman in this industry. That the work that they do and have done is so incredible and so inspiring and what they're doing for women, especially this season, the women in this season have been leading the charge full force. Full force. So unapologetically it's incredible. It's so inspiring. I just want them to know how much they matter and how incredible they are, and I hope that they know that.

Alison Stewart: It's been quite a week, quite a month for you. You've won the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award. You had your portrait revealed at SARDI.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I did.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You went to the Black Women on Broadway event-

Jasmine Amy Rogers: I did.

Alison Stewart: -which, I think, looked really cool. It was like Cynthia Erivo, Adrienne Warren, Kara Young, LaChanze, Danielle Brooks, Whitney White. How would you describe that event?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: It was the most joyous experience ever. It was so amazing. Everybody was having such a great time. You could tell we were all just so excited and elated to be there. All these events, they're so exhausting, but in the best way, obviously, truly. That event was so empowering because we were all just there being our full, unapologetic selves, having a good time, dancing. There were drinks, there was food, and we were just-- Some of us were meeting each other for the first time, but it was the most incredible room. It was just so full of love.

They did this thing where when the women got up and were being honored, they made them. LaTanya Richardson Jackson, she said, "Do I have to go down the aisle and do this little dance?" They were like, "Yes, you do." She came down and did her little dance on her strut and her suit. They made everybody get up and do this. We just got to freaking honor them and celebrate them as they did this. It was so incredible. It was so incredible.

Alison Stewart: There's already been a petition out. Huge Boop! fans, they want to have Boop! at the Tony Awards. Over 6,000 people have signed this petition.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh my goodness.

Alison Stewart: What does that say other to each?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: When I first saw it, I was really moved. I cried because it just is so nice to know that we are doing our job. All we wanted to do when we set out for this show was let people have a good time. We wanted them to come in, to relax, to shut their brain off, and just experience Joy. The fact that we did that and they want to see that means everything. It's so incredible. I'm kind of speechless by it because I was resigned to the fact that it is what it is, and I still am, but the fact that people care is really, really cool. It's really special.

Alison Stewart: I asked Jonathan Groff this, what does it mean to be a theater kid?

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Oh, my gosh. It's amazing. It's the coolest thing ever. We are so weird.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Jasmine Amy Rogers: We were at this Vogue at Anna Wintour's house, of all places. We were just up there being like little strange, loud creatures in our little gowns, and it was so amazing. It's really special. We get to go to these events. It's a little nerve-wracking because you're like, "Oh my goodness, look at all these people, these titans in the industry." They are just the same as you. They are goofy and strange and nervous and they fangirl in the same way you fangirl. It's the best thing ever. It's so cool.

Alison Stewart: Jasmine Amy Rogers is playing Betty Boop on Broadway. She is nominated for a Tony Award. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Jasmine Amy Rogers: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on the song Where I Wanna Be.

[MUSIC - Jasmine Amy Rogers: Where I Wanna Be]

Okay, fellas, Key of G

Wait! You're sayin', who is she?

Hey there, New York town!

Put your ears on

And let's burn this bandstand down!

As you know I'm not from here--