Dylan Mulvaney came dressed and ready for the rapture.
“So it was all over TikTok,” says the actress, sipping from an Arnold Palmer at a sidewalk table outside a West Village coffee shop. “Apparently, people were supposed to — the good Christians were supposed to — be taken to heaven and they said, ‘Make sure to be dressed the way you want to be raptured.’ I think this felt very pure,” adds Mulvaney, dressed in a white slipdress and matching white sunglasses for the Sept. 23 occasion. “And I did get full glam just in case, you know, if this is the last look.”
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Mulvaney is very tapped into TikTok trends, and for good reason: the social media platform is where the 28-year-old catapulted into the public eye during the pandemic and built her fan base. But her focus this fall is offline and down the block, where she’s staging her one-woman show “The Least Problematic Woman” at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The show, which opens Tuesday, arrives Off-Broadway after its initial debut at the Fringe Festival at Edinburgh last summer.
“What’s exciting about Fringe is that people don’t come with expectations, because they’re seeing ten shows a day,” says Mulvaney, adding that she hopes to recapture some of that “Fringe energy” downtown. “It’s a much bigger investment to come to the theater here [in New York] and take time out of your day, or after work, to go see a play.”
The show, written by and starring Mulvaney, is inspired by her own childhood and trajectory in the public eye, while tapping into her musical theater training. Although Mulvaney plays 20 different roles — from a priest to a talk show host — the through-line character is a version of herself: a young girl coming out as trans and coming-of-age, while navigating her Catholic faith and role in the public eye. The character faces a brand controversy not unlike Mulvaney’s 2023 partnership with Bud Light, which went viral and resulted in a conservative backlash against the company.
“So much of it [the show] is the pursuit of me trying to be unproblematic and trying to live up to the expectations of the Catholic church, and trying to be a palatable version of a transwoman,” Mulvaney says. “And realizing that the second I try to please one group of people, then I lose another. And then when I try to please those people, I lose this other group.”
While Mulvaney doesn’t label herself an activist, she realizes the weight of bringing a show exploring identity to the stage in the current moment, when LGBTQIA+ rights and protections are under attack.
“So much of the world I think is scared to talk about these subjects, and what I’m asking people to do is to laugh about them. I think the best way into healing from trauma is giving permission to laugh with me about it,” she says. “It’s definitely not Trans 101. I always approach things from my version of [life], which is very different than probably the typical doll experience.”
Earlier this year, Mulvaney released her memoir, “Paper Doll: Notes From a Late Bloomer” as a way to talk about “the things that I couldn’t online,” she says. “Once BeerGate happened, I felt like I didn’t have anywhere to really share my story in the way that I wanted and on my terms,” she adds. “I wrote that book as a way of being like, I’m an adult. Here’s some of my raunchier stories. Here’s some of the vulnerability and the darker side of me that I hadn’t gotten to show.”
“The Least Problematic Girl in the World” has, for now, turned Mulvaney into a different sort of girl.
“ I’m leaning into the West Village girly aesthetic right now,” says Mulvaney, who relocated from Los Angeles to New York this summer in anticipation of the show. “ I love being able to get pizza at 2 a.m. I love there’s always something to do.”
Speaking of pizza: donning her first costume from the show — which happens to be a white dress and pair of angel wings, very on-brand for the rapture — Mulvaney trots across Hudson Street, heads into a local pizza shop, and orders a slice. (And eats it, as her costume designer looks on anxiously.) Later, Mulvaney posts a video of the excursion on social media as promo for her show.
It’s still a few days before previews start, and Mulvaney almost can’t believe the moment is around the corner. Although she’s been “sort of disassociating” in the lead-up, Mulvaney has a simple description for the feeling of creating and bringing an original piece of theater to Off-Broadway.
“It’s a miracle,” she says.
Launch Gallery: Dylan Mulvaney, Star of ‘The Least Problematic Woman in the World’ on Broadway, Around New York With WWD
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