Jasmine Amy Rogers, the breakout star of Boop! The Musical, sits in a corner booth at Sardi’s, squinting. “Is that Idina Menzel?” she asks, eyeing a caricature of the Wicked actress across the room. The restaurant’s walls are lined with drawings of Broadway legends—Elaine Stritch, Bernadette Peters, and Phylicia Rashad among them—looming over diners. Now, Rogers joins their ranks as a first-time Tony nominee for Best Actress in a Musical, a milestone she calls “very, very wild. It’s too grand, too exciting.”

Her performance as the sultry, spit-curled Betty Boop—brought to life from the cartoon—earned raves when the musical opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in April. Today, she’s a mix of Jasmine and Betty: fresh from a showcase for tour producers, she’s still wearing her wide-eyed Boop! makeup but otherwise looks like an actor off-duty in a tank top, jeans, and sneakers.

The exuberant (if occasionally puzzling) show—imagine Barbie meets The Wizard of Oz—is directed with flair by Broadway veteran Jerry Mitchell, who’s also nominated for Best Choreography. With music by David Foster, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, and a book by Bob Martin, the story follows Betty as she leaves her animated world in a fit of existential frustration, landing in present-day New York to find her true self. Love and self-discovery follow.

At 26, Rogers is the youngest nominee in her category by decades and is still adjusting to the spotlight. “If I sit and think about the gravity of it too much, I start to spiral a little,” she admits with a laugh. Her fellow nominees include Audra McDonald (Gypsy), Nicole Scherzinger (Sunset Boulevard), and Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard (Death Becomes Her).

McDonald even sent her flowers and cupcakes after the nominations were announced. “We DM back and forth—it’s been really nice,” Rogers says. It’s a full-circle moment for her, remembering how awestruck she was watching McDonald’s 2016 Tony performance for Shuffle Along in high school—especially the high kicks the actress nailed while six months pregnant. “I was like, Wow, she’s insane for that. It was incredible!” Other favorite Tony moments include Jennifer Holliday’s legendary 1982 performance of “And I Am Telling You” from Dreamgirls and the Hamilton cast’s 2016 medley of “History Has Its Eyes on You” and “Yorktown.”

Growing up near Boston and later in Texas, Rogers was an energetic kid who sang constantly. “I’d sit in my room belting Disney princess songs. My mom was also obsessed with Wicked and Rent,” she says of her early influences. Her large, blended family—with step- and half-siblings—was, in her words, “a lot of good chaos.”

In high school outside Houston, she took theater more seriously. Roles like the mom in In the Heights and Candy in the obscure Zombie Prom made her realize she could actually do this. By her senior year, she was a finalist in the 2017 Jimmy Awards, a national musical theater competition for high schoolers. A clip of her singing “Easy as Life” from Aida at the ceremony hints at the raw intensity she now brings to Betty Boop.

After two years at the Manhattan School of Music, she dropped out and quickly landed a role in Becoming Nancy, a new musical directed by Jerry Mitchell that premiered in Atlanta in 2019. Following a tour as Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls, Mitchell brought her in to audition for Betty in Boop!’s Chicago tryout in 2023. (She’d played a smaller role in an earlier workshop.)

She wasn’t prepared for the tap-heavy choreography in that first audition. “It was horrifying!” Though she’d been a competitive dancer as a kid, she stopped training after moving to Texas at 11. Still, she figured she could fake it—and clearly, she did.She hoped her natural talent would carry her through, but she was wrong. “It was devastating—I went home and cried,” she recalls, the memory still making her wince. She didn’t get the part that time.

Later that spring, while helping a friend with another show in a Manhattan rehearsal space, she heard the Boop! music drifting down the hallway. Rogers did some digging and learned the production still hadn’t cast Betty. She spent the day pacing around midtown, debating what to do before finally calling her agent. “I said, ‘I don’t know what we need to do, but I have to get back in there.’ I’d never done anything like that before.” It worked. For the next two weeks, she crammed in as many tap classes as possible at Broadway Dance Center before her second audition.

The rest is history. Her performance is a masterful balancing act—bringing depth to a famously one-dimensional character. “The challenge with Betty,” Rogers explains, “is blending the over-the-top energy of a cartoon with real humanity.” Her showstopping number, Something to Shout About, a soaring David Foster ballad, brings the house down.

Rogers, who describes herself as bubbly and larger-than-life, found Betty a natural fit. “A lot of her is also part of me.”

She loved collaborating with Tony-nominated costume designer Gregg Barnes to recreate Betty’s iconic hourglass silhouette. “I’m in a corset the whole show—it’s amazing and awful at the same time. But the shape is so beautiful, I wouldn’t feel like her without it.” For Betty’s signature bob and curls, Rogers and hairstylist Sabana Majeed drew inspiration from Dorothy Dandridge and classic Hollywood glamour, keeping it recognizable but refined.

With the Tony Awards approaching, Rogers is trying to pace herself. “I sleep a lot! And take my vitamins—C and bromelain,” she says. She leans on her Broadway friends for support, like Samantha Williams (Pirates! The Penzance Musical) and fellow first-time nominee Joy Woods (Gypsy), whose theater is right next door. (“I just adore her,” Rogers adds.)

Offstage, she unwinds with true-crime podcasts (And That’s Why We Drink, My Favorite Murder) and cuddles with her boxer, Martha May Whovier. Her playlists shuffle between Phoebe Bridgers, Aretha Franklin, and Dinah Washington.

Before heading to the theater for her pre-show routine, Rogers takes a moment to reflect. “I’m always pushing myself to be better,” she says, gazing up at the star-studded ceiling. “But now I know—I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.”

Portrait credits: Styling by Eliza Yerry; hair by Amy Farid; makeup by Taylor Levitan.