It’s been an incredible year for Chiara Aurelia. The young actress, 22, with major movie and TV credits that include Luckiest Girl Alive, Fear Street Part Two, and Cruel Summer, booked not one, but two dream jobs in New York City in 2025.
Aurelia briefly starred in the Off-Broadway production of Dilaria at DR2 Theatre opposite Ella Stiller and Chris Briney, and has since made her Broadway debut in John Proctor Is the Villain as Shelby Holcomb, taking over the role from Sadie Sink. The Best Play Tony nominee, written by Kimberly Belflower and directed by Danya Taymor, has been extended through September 7 at the Booth Theatre.
“I didn’t know how realistic or possible it was, if I’m being completely honest,” Aurelia tells Broadway Direct by phone from her apartment about the opportunity. “There are just all of these ideas and preconceived notions about crossing over from film and TV to theater. There are different skills that are required, and I think everyone should do both, but there’s a lot of people who don’t.”
When Aurelia — who grew up in Taos, New Mexico, and Los Angeles — was about 11 years old, she was obsessed with Hamilton. She watched any videos she could find on YouTube and learned the lyrics in entirety. For months, she begged her mom to see the Broadway show before the original cast left the production. Finally, her mom agreed. During the trip to New York City, Aurelia posed for a photo in Times Square, which subsequently became one of her first posts on her Instagram page.
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Nearly a decade later, hours before she would make her Broadway debut in John Proctor, Aurelia re-created that photo in the same spot. “Things are so much more in reach than we realize. It was just the reality that dreams do come true and anything’s possible,” she reflects of the journey. “When I was 10, the idea that I could ever be standing there again, having a show just two blocks away, was something that seemed so far out of my reach. But if you think about something hard enough, and you dream it, you can will it into being.”
One year into living in New York City, Aurelia willed a stage career into being. She originally auditioned for the part of Raelynn when the play was first being cast for Broadway. “She was tremendous — just such a wonderful actor presence in the room,” Belflower, who has been working on the play since 2018 and is now fielding Hollywood’s attention, says. “Danya and I were both blown away by her. Her energy is such Shelby energy, but obviously the role of Shelby was already cast.” Aurelia didn’t get the role — it went to Amalia Yoo. Aurelia says, “That job wasn’t right for me. I moved on and forgot about it in some way.”
Even though Aurelia didn’t book the show, she still went to see it numerous times as a fan and because she’s good friends with Sink. “As we were working to replace Sadie, Danya and I both were like, ‘Do you remember that Chiara girl?’ We didn’t know originally that she and Sadie were close friends.”
About a week into rehearsals for Dilaria, Aurelia’s agent called with news that Sink was leaving and casting was looking for a replacement. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool. Who are they thinking about?’” she said, not realizing they wanted her to take over.
“Knowing they were good friends meant a lot,” Belflower explains. “We have all worked so hard as a company to build this closeness and intimacy. We wanted to be intentional about putting someone into the mix who was able to fit in with this just genuinely phenomenal group. Sadie was so responsible for getting the play to this point. To be able to do it with someone new, and to have people still show up and feel so impacted by the play, is wonderful.”
Aurelia wound up rehearsing during the day for John Proctor while doing performances of Dilaria at night. “They’re both really awesome female-written plays that are about unique young women. Completely different but really interesting stories,” she says of both productions. Julia Randall’s Dilaria is about a young girl who becomes fixated on a college classmate who died. John Proctor centers on a group of high schoolers in rural Georgia as “they’re grappling with some really intense subject matter,” Aurelia explains of the teens who dissect Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and examine its parallels to their lives in the #MeToo era.
Carrying the responsibility of playing Shelby after Sink was a “lot of pressure” for Aurelia. Even though they’re friends and former Fear Street Part Two costars, they didn’t rehearse together. “It’s a really interesting balance between bringing myself to it and also not making people feel like I’m completely changing everything that Sadie did,” she says. She describes Shelby as outspoken, fiery, and “doesn’t quite fit in with everybody else.”
As for the famous dance routine finale set to Lorde’s “Green Light”? Aurelia reveals she was “really scared” about learning the four-and-a-half-minute dance. “I’m familiar with learning lines, but learning a full choreographed dance number, it wasn’t something I was fully prepared for.” Lorde’s “Super Cut” was the song Aurelia listened to on repeat as a teenager after hearing it in the movie Something Great on Netflix. “Green Light” wasn’t “her song,” but has since become a coming-of-age anthem for young girls as it plays during the pinnacle moment in the play. “Kimberly Belflower told me that she told Lorde my name, and that’s as good as it gets for me, honestly.”
Next up for John Proctor is turning the play into a movie, with Belflower writing the screenplay. Belflower reveals she had gotten a lot of interest from different studios since its Broadway debut back in April and took a bunch of meetings in Los Angeles and New York City. “I just found what felt like the right fit,” she says. Universal Pictures optioned the film rights with Sink as executive producer alongside Marc Platt and Tina Fey.
For Belflower, Broadway was never the goal when she started writing. Like Aurelia, it’s been a whirlwind year for her. “I’m very careful to remind myself it’s not going to be this every time, and nor should it be. Not every play needs to be on Broadway. I feel very lucky at this moment. If I think about it too closely, I feel a little crazy.”
Aurelia has respectfully not put her name in the hat to play Shelby on screen. At least, not yet.
“Not that I wouldn’t want to be in the movie, but I think that Kimberly is going to do a wonderful job writing it, and it’s going to be spectacular. I very much trust their judgment on what makes sense for [casting] that [role].”
Her dream role? Clicking her ruby heels three times back to Kansas. “[The Wizard of Oz] was my favorite movie growing up and I love, love that character [Dorothy] so much. They should probably never redo that movie. But if they do and I’m not in it, that will not be OK.”
