Chrissy Metz Finally Gets Her Broadway Bow, and She's Not Holding Back

Chrissy Metz spent six seasons on "This Is Us" making the entire country ugly-cry into a box of tissues. As of June 18, she's doing something almost stranger for her résumé: making Broadway audiences dance in their seats. Metz officially stepped into the jukebox musical "& Juliet" at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre as Angelique, a role she'll hold through September 13 — her first time on a Broadway stage.

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Metz has been open that this isn't a random detour — it's the thing she wanted before any of it. "It's a bucket list dream," she told press ahead of her debut. "I've always wanted to do Broadway." By her own account, she's also not walking in as a curious outsider: she saw "& Juliet" ten times as a paying audience member before ever auditioning, which tracks less like a career move and more like an actual fan getting the call.

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That's the real hook here. "This Is Us" built Metz's public image almost entirely around wrenching, dramatic vulnerability — Kate Pearson's grief, her weight-loss surgery storyline, her voice breaking on cue. "& Juliet" is Max Martin pop songs, a jukebox-musical remix of "Romeo and Juliet" where Juliet doesn't die for love, and a cast built to make an audience grin, not sob. Metz described the difference in the room itself: "Everybody's been so supportive and encouraging and it feels very communal in the art making."

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She's also talked about what lands with the crowd night to night — not a tearjerker moment, but pure, unguarded delight. "To see the joy — whether it's a dad crying at 'Shape of My Heart,' or just the joy and excitement," she said of watching the audience react in real time.

"& Juliet" itself is no small production to join: the show hit its 1,500th Broadway performance on June 23, just days into Metz's run, having opened in November 2022 and built one of Broadway's most durable post-pandemic hits.

The rest of Metz's year hasn't exactly been quiet either — she also appeared in "Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger" as a journalist and starred in the Lifetime film "Faith in the Flames: The Nichole Jolly Story," playing real-life nurse Nichole Jolly, who helped evacuate 67 patients from a Northern California hospital during the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California. But right now — eight shows a week — it's the Sondheim Theatre marquee that's new, and by every account so far, she's the one having the most fun with it.