\u201cMamma Mia!\u201d<\/a> at the Winter Garden Theatre.<\/p>\nWhen she got the news she\u2019d landed the role, she had just finished teaching a unit on the American Revolution, where she used the musical \u201cHamilton\u201d as source material.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a lot of boys in my classroom and they were all athletes. So when I introduced \u2018Hamilton\u2019 to them, I was like, \u2018This is going to be a chore.\u2019 And they were glued,\u201d Sherrill told The Post.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0would get feedback from parents being like, \u2018I\u2019ve never heard my kids sing before and we\u2019re making dinner and they know all the \u2018Hamilton\u2019 lyrics.’\u201d<\/p>\n
So when she announced to the class that she would be leaving for Broadway, \u201cthey were like, \u2018Are you gonna be in \u2018Hamilton?!’\u201d<\/p>\nChristine Sherrill made her Broadway debut in \u201cMamma Mia!,\u201d which runs at the Winter Garden Theatre until Feb. 1. Leonardo Munoz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nShe auditioned for \u201cMamma Mia!\u2019s\u201d leading lady in March, when she took a Thursday off from Saint Joseph\u2019s Catholic Academy to fly to New York for a long-shot audition.<\/p>\n
The next morning, \u201cI went back to school like nothing ever happened. I literally had to let it go. I was like, \u2018There were so many women there that are incredibly talented. This is not for the Wisconsin teacher,’\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But it was. And with good reason. <\/p>\n
The Chicago native with a master\u2019s degree in education always had talent and was actually discovered by director Marc Robin in 2001 while performing at Pheasant Run Dinner Theatre outside Chicago, where actor Sean Hayes also got his start.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was singing at night for extra money because we all know how much teachers make. And he saw me and was like \u2026 \u2018How come I don\u2019t know you?’\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so grateful to him that I actually sent him<\/em> flowers on our Broadway opening night.\u201d<\/p>\nIn the beloved musical, she plays Donna, the single mother whose daughter, played by Amy Weaver, invited her three possible fathers to her wedding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nShe taught for eight years while also working as an actress \u2014 reluctant to give up her day job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed the stability and was afraid to leave teaching. Since being out of college, I\u2019ve gone back and forth between two careers. So I was an actor in Chicago regularly, and then I would go back to teaching, and I was always a tutor,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had gotten quite a few calls from my agents about other auditions, and nothing really seemed to be enough to pull me out of teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
That all changed when she learned that \u201cMamma Mia!\u201d was headed back to Broadway.<\/p>\nWhen Sherrill arrived at the Broadway audition, she immediately doubted herself. \u201cThere were hundreds of people there \u2026 It was one of those moments where I was like, \u2018Wow, you were really kidding yourself,’\u201d she recalled. Leonardo Munoz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSherrill\u2019s history with the beloved musical dates back to 2006, when she toured with the show in another role.<\/p>\n
She first played Donna \u2014 the single mother whose daughter invited her three possible fathers to her wedding \u2014 on tour in 2014 and again in 2023. She estimates she performed in the show 3,000 times.<\/p>\n
Meryl Streep famously played Donna in the 2008 movie version of \u201cMamma Mia!,\u201d but since the A-lister hasn\u2019t come to see the show yet, Sherrill has another favorite celebrity audience member.<\/p>\n
\u201cJean Smart. She\u2019s come twice. She came to see us in L.A.. And then she came to see us here. She always sends notes and stuff. She\u2019s just one of the coolest people ever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This time last year, Christine Sherrill was teaching fifth graders American history in Kenosha, Wis. Now she\u2019s making Broadway history. The 54-year-old actress and teacher is playing Donna in \u201cMamma Mia!\u201d at the Winter Garden Theatre. When she got the news she\u2019d landed the role, she had just finished teaching a unit on the American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2069204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[25538,387324,344468,21741,25404,34136,346267,59570,345885,387325,24047],"class_list":["post-2069203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-actors","tag-auditions","tag-broadway","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-jean-smart","tag-mamma-mia","tag-meryl-streep","tag-musicals","tag-teachers","tag-theater"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Mamma-Mias-leading-lady-landed-her-first-Broadway-role-in.jp-scaled.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2069203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069205,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069203\/revisions\/2069205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2069203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2069203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2069203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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