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Auli'i Cravalho
Auli'i Cravalho

Moana Star Auliʻi Cravalho on Making Her Broadway Debut in Cabaret

Auliʻi Cravalho signs on to our video call from her phone in her dressing room at Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre an hour before the evening performance. She’s wearing 95 percent of the stage makeup she puts on to play Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, and is speaking with Broadway Direct fresh off spending the previous two days at Disney World doing press for Moana 2.

Seeing the intricacies of Cravalho’s makeup up close is extraordinary. She points out the glitter, with purple under the eyes. “Black here, black there, and then sparkle on top,” she explains of the process that now takes her 40 minutes to put on herself. She notes the fake eyelashes that touch her eyebrows were “the bane of my existence for the first couple of shows.”

Her door is closed, but it usually stays open so she can hear about everyone’s day while getting ready.

Auli'i Cravalho and the cast of <i>Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club</i>. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Auli’i Cravalho and the cast of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

“I never expected to have such a familial feeling with people on stage. The big difference between TV, film, and theater, when we say hello and we give each other a hug here, they hold on that extra second, and that made all the difference to me, especially coming into a new role and taking over for Gayle [Rankin]. That acceptance and support were really, really helpful,” she says of her castmates and backstage crew.

Cabaret marks Cravalho’s Broadway debut. Of course, she made a splash in her first professional role, at 14 years old as the voice of Disney’s Moana, and she performed the Oscar-nominated Lin-Manuel Miranda song “How Far I’ll Go” at the 2017 Academy Awards. Cravalho went on to star as Ariel in ABC’s The Little Mermaid Live! and made her West End debut as Eva Perón in a concert production of Evita at Royal Drury Lane in 2023. Cravalho most recently starred as Janis ‘Imi’ike in the movie musical adaptation of Mean Girls (she also did her own eyeliner for the film), and lends her voice again for Moana 2, out in theaters November 27.

Auli'i Cravalho and Adam Lambert in Cabaret. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Auli’i Cravalho and Adam Lambert in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Cravalho, who was born in Hawaii, says she started singing out of the womb “because I was a colicky baby and I simply could not be consoled. So I developed really, really good lungs.” She played Mrs. Claus’s understudy in elementary school, but never had any leading roles. “To be fair, a lot of them went to the seniors because of seniority,” she adds. A casting agent watched her perform at a charity event and encouraged Cravalho to submit an audition for Moana.

The rest is history.

“I never thought that I would play pretend for a living. So this is a very fun surprise,” she says, pausing as the stage manager announces over the loudspeaker that audience members with dining tickets should take their seats.

As a young girl, Cravalho says, she didn’t really know “Broadway was a thing.” She had never been to New York City before doing press for Moana. “I always wanted to perform, but I didn’t know that such a professional stage existed. I didn’t know about the Tony Awards or anything like that. I didn’t know you could get an award for playing pretend,” she admits.

Hamilton was Cravalho’s first Broadway show, in 2016. “I saw it just as Lin was leaving. Thankfully, I do think he helped me get those tickets. Thank you very much, Lin!” she says.

Auli'i Cravalho and Calvin Leon Smith in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Auli’i Cravalho and Calvin Leon Smith in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Cabaret was not something that was often performed in Hawaii, so growing up, Cravalho didn’t know much about the Kander and Ebb musical except for seeing the film starring Liza Minnelli. The show, staged in the round in this interpretation, explores the seedy party life of British nightclub singer Sally Bowles and a doomed romantic relationship with American Clifford Bradshaw, leading up to the rise of the Nazi regime in Berlin, Germany, in the early 1930s.

A friend, Mason Alexander Park, introduced Cravalho to this version of the musical, which first premiered in London. She watched bootlegs on YouTube and then saw the production live, starring Park as the Emcee and Maude Apatow as Sally Bowles.

“I think I can do that” was her thought after seeing the show ahead of auditioning for the New York–bound production. The role went to Rankin.

Then, another opportunity to audition as Rankin’s replacement came around, and this time, she booked it.

“Honestly, I’ve been auditioning for so many things, and I don’t hear back. Thankfully, my heart has hardened a little bit to not take it too personally. It is one of those things that if it’s meant to be, it’ll come back around, and in this case, it was meant to be,” she says.

She was working on other projects while taking Zoom calls with director Rebecca Frecknell and was in Indonesia for her first dialect coaching sessions with Jane Fujita. She put on BBC radio to “see if I can pick something up,” she says in a British accent. “It was hilarious.” Lines were required to be memorized before a four-week rehearsal process began with Adam Lambert as the Emcee and Calvin Leon Smith as Clifford Bradshaw, also new to the show.

Auli'i Cravalho in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Auli’i Cravalho in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

“I think I’m still finding her every night,” Cravalho says enthusiastically when asked about her interpretation of the iconic role that has been portrayed by Natasha Richardson, Michelle Williams, and Emma Stone over the years. Cravalho and Lambert perform seven shows a week through March 30, 2025. “I ask myself, When am I lying and when am I telling the truth? When am I baring my soul in ‘Maybe This Time’? When am I descending into madness in ‘Cabaret’? When do I love the audience in ‘Don’t Tell Mama,’ and when am I cursing them for even sitting there? Dramaturgically, there isn’t much to go off of. For Sally, where is she from? Stonehenge? Stratford-upon-Avon? She never says, and so all of that is up to interpretation. I play her a few years older than myself, and I think that she is someone who is a survivor, first and foremost, but also someone who has a deep longing to be loved.”

The biggest concern about making her Broadway debut? Never mind gulping down a raw egg on stage every night. That’s an easy one. “I am very good at taking shots. Thankfully, I enjoy Worcestershire sauce. I had to learn how to say ‘Worcestershire sauce.’ But it’s not too bad,” she says with a chuckle. It’s actually the movement that gives her pause. “I see myself as a singer first, and then an actor, and then a dancer very much last,” Cravalho says, adding, “Unless I’m dancing something traditional, like hula. I competed in many a hula competition in my younger years.”

Auli'i Cravalho in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Auli’i Cravalho in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

On opening night with the new cast on a late September Thursday evening, celebrities were in attendance. Annaleigh Ashford, Darren Criss, and Kaia Gerber were just a few who watched Cravalho pour her soul into the character. Her Mean Girls movie musical costar Reneé Rapp, who previously told Broadway Direct she’d love to play Sally Bowles, had already seen Cravalho at an earlier performance. “I can’t wait to see her as Sally,” Cravalho said at the thought of Rapp taking on the role. “I think that she would do a fantastic job. I’m sad to have missed her in Mean Girls [on Broadway], so give me another chance to see her in another role, please.”

A dream role Cravalho would love revisit: Eva Perón. “I would love for Evita to come back to Broadway. Having touched upon that character, I would love to come back to her,” she says, adding “fingers crossed” when I mention the recent 2023 A.R.T. production in Boston.

Thirty minutes later, we wrap up our conversation.

“You helped me warm up,” she says. “Truly. I woke up maybe an hour and a half ago, so yeah, I needed to warm up. Thank you for talking to me.”


Cravalo stars as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club through Sunday, March 30, 2025.

Learn More About Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club