“Sandy, you must start anew,” Laura Osnes sang in her 16-bar audition for reality show competition Grease: You’re the One That I Want!. She looks young in the video with her hair pinned back behind her ears. Nervousness flickers across her face. “Don’t you know what you must do?”
Yet, as she told me recently over the phone, she held her head high, faced the fear, and followed a call on her heart. “Something just told me, GO.”
That was fifteen years ago. Unbeknownst to Osnes, now 37, that audition would catapult her to national fame and jumpstart one of the more storied Broadway careers in recent memory. It’s also a painful reminder of a time before — before the near-total erosion of national discourse, before the pandemic, and before Sandy’s lyrics would prove prescient in Osnes’s life.
THICK SKIN, SOFT HEART
Osnes and her husband, photographer Nathan Johnson, moved in 2007 from Minnesota to New York City where she enjoyed a fairytale career as Broadway’s choice ingénue. After her year-long contract with Grease expired, Osnes replaced the great Kelli O’Hara as Nellie Forbush in the 2010 Lincoln Center Theater revival of South Pacific, and quickly continued on to play Hope Harcourt in Broadway’s Anything Goes, a production helmed by Sutton Foster and Joel Grey.
While Frank Wildhorn’s Bonnie and Clyde would only run on Broadway for two months, the show became a cult classic and earned Osnes her first Tony nomination for her turn as Bonnie Parker. Her second nod came in 2013, as the titular role in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. In 2017, she traded glass slippers for LaDuca’s, originating Julia Trojan in Bandstand at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.
Amid her dizzying success, Osnes remained a-political. “I made it my business not to tell anyone else how to feel, or what views to have in that regard,” she recounted to me in her first press interview since 2020. “If I had something to say, I would chime in, but I didn’t often feel educated enough on many topics. I would just listen.”
“I sing and dance,” Osnes continued. “I like to tell stories, and it’s not my place to chime in with every issue.”
That was enough until 2016.
THE GREAT DIVIDE
“You could feel there was a shift in the city,” Johnson said of 2016. “I can remember a meal we were having with friends, just throwing some ideas around in what was usually a pretty safe environment, and the conversation came to a standstill. To a halt. I clocked that. We started to hear the way people spoke about each other with a tone of inflexibility — not making room for one another.”
Even in the face of this newfound political schism — and the Covid-19 pandemic four years later— the couple poured into the community they loved.
“Our industry thrives off of large groups of people coming together and singing, which was something we were told was dangerous at the beginning,” Osnes said. “Everyone was weary and afraid. How were we going to go on?”
“But, what’s really beautiful,” she continued, “is that artists will create no matter what.”
For a moment, creatives banded together. A deluge of quarantine art hit the internet — musicals, albums mastered on iPhones, virtual concerts and readings, and even virtual photo shoots.
“We knew that it was our responsibility to continue to spread joy and entertainment and provide an escape for people who were stuck in their homes. We wanted to bring theater or music or art to them,” she said.
The moment proved fleeting. Frustrated by the trifecta of persistent Covid lockdowns, an election year, and the death of George Floyd, people sifted into separate ideological factions. Tensions, already high, were exacerbated by social pressure. “If you didn’t become an advocate, it wasn’t enough.”
The couple remained quiet. “I think neither of us looked at our social platforms as necessarily the best place to engage because there’s not a lot of nuance,” Johnson said.
As the pandemic wore on, the hurt hit closer to home. Friends were reprimanded for doing workouts in the park. Johnson made the painful decision to let go of his own studio employee.
“It wasn’t until we saw policies affecting us and our loved ones, whether it be lockdowns, mandates, job loss, or families with kids having their businesses shut down that we started to become more passionate about policy,” he continued. “We really figured out what we believed and why we believed it.”
BITTER
In August of 2022, just months after the ubiquitous Covid death ticker reached one-million, the New York Post’s gossip section, Page Six, published an article insinuating that Osnes had been fired from a one-night concert performance of Crazy for You at Guild Hall on Long Island due to her Covid vaccination status.
“A few months ago, I was informed that protocols had changed,” Osnes wrote about the project in a public statement, “and I would now need proof of vaccination to participate. I was disappointed, but responded that I would have to withdraw, as I have not yet gotten the vaccine.”
“The director emailed everyone privately to ask if they were vaccinated,” she continued. “I replied honestly that I wasn’t, and stated that I would have to back out… I even offered to help find a replacement. A week later, there was an article in the New York Post saying that I was vague about my status and put my coworkers at risk. We hadn’t even started rehearsals yet.”
The article spread like wildfire with immediate professional implications. Three jobs rescinded offers to Osnes within just a few days.
“As mandates set in, I understood that making this medical choice likely meant sacrificing some work for a period of time. While I didn't agree with the new mandates, I came to peace with the idea of having to step away for a bit. I could've gotten a fake vax card like so many of my peers at that time, but honesty has always been paramount to me,” she said. “I was blindsided when it was my integrity that came under fire in the article. My 15-year long reputation crumbled overnight.”
Osnes sued the New York Post for defamation to the tune of five million dollars. Just last week, the lawsuit was resolved.
Osnes crafted a response on Instagram, which notably excluded an apology. It only fanned the flames. More devastating than the allegedly libelous article was the public response to her medical decision. The former princess poster-child was lambasted by the industry — and the fans — that used to elevate her.
“If you claim to be a part of the same community that had to watch Nick Cordero die and yet still refuse to get the vaccine, you don’t deserve to be a part of that community anymore. #lauraosnes,” one person wrote online.
Since that tweet was penned in mid-2021, much has been learned about the vaccine's efficacy and potential risks. In the wake of worker shortages, revelations about myocarditis and menstrual cycles, a Supreme Court ruling, the CDC’s statement on natural immunity, and questions about the vaccine’s negative impact on fertility, many believe it’s time to bring unvaccinated people back to work. However, there doesn’t seem to be a place for Osnes on Broadway.
As Chris Peterson of Onstage Blog wrote after news of the lawsuit broke, “Why am I going so hard after Laura? It’s because she’s supported candidates, policies & theories, that promote lies, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc that have endangered the lives of those she shares the stage with and has the nerve to smile as if there’s nothing wrong with that.”
He continues in the comments, “it’s downright evil.”
However logically challenged his argument, Peterson’s tweet points towards one thing that’s true: we in society are no longer able to tolerate life with those with whom we disagree. To classify the other as not just “different” but as “evil” robs them of their humanity in an effort to justify whatever cruelty may follow: attacks on character, career, friends and loved ones. When the “other” is no longer human, it’s easy to strip from them the most human parts of life.
“The expectation we experienced was that if you’re not going to get vaccinated, then you don’t support the community. But that’s just not true,” Johnson said. “We wanted to support the community, it just looked different than the expectation.”
In the midst of the public vitriol, Osnes received private messages of support.
“There was certainly a void. So many people were silenced during this time — people whose lives were affected, whether they lost their jobs and livelihoods, or relationships, or had heartbreaking adverse vaccine reactions,” she noted. “People who were in my same camp started flooding my inbox, thanking me for taking a stand.”
ANYWHERE
“I remember, at first, just trying to pick up the pieces, trying to hold the shattered vase of my life together,” said Osnes. “But we quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen.”
“We couldn’t go back to the city. We didn’t feel safe there,” Johnson said. “We were in the eye of a hurricane.”
In the wake of the controversy, Osnes and Johnson moved from New York City to Nashville, ostracized from the community and industry they’d loved and invested in for fifteen years.
“We realized that we had experienced a death of sorts,” Johnson continued, “and started to write things down to mark the season we were in.”
The couple wrote themselves through phases of grief: shock, denial, sadness, and anger.
“I’m a creator, and it’s part of my being that I cannot deny. I was no longer allowed to create in the way that I had done my entire life,” Osnes recalled. “I needed to find a new channel, some new way to be creative.”
A manager friend took her under his wing, and encouraged her to turn her writing into songs.
At first, Osnes was resistant.
“I thought, I’m not good at this. This isn’t what I do. I’ve always brought others’ words to life.” However, after leaving her initial writing session with a fully fledged song, she agreed to continue writing without a product in mind. “I looked up, and thought, woah, this is my experience, and I have a song to show for it.”
“Songwriting is extremely vulnerable. Every time you write, you have to rip the bandaid off and open yourself up again to your collaborators.” But by the end of 2021, Osnes had a full collection of songs and another call in her heart. “I think I need… I think this is how I’m going to tell my story,” she thought. Her debut EP, On the Other Side, Pt. 1, was born.
After dropping the album on October 5th, 2022, Osnes realized she’d written herself into forgiveness. She is now pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter.
“There was so long where I felt like my voice didn’t matter,” she said, speaking through tears. “Not only am I getting to share my voice again through song, but also find my voice as a human being. Our hope is that the others who have felt silenced and judged and demonized this last year all listen and know they are not alone. I hope these lyrics hold true for all who need to hear them, because every voice deserves to be heard.”
ON THE OTHER SIDE
“In the midst of having to move forward with courage, you’re faced with opportunities,” Osnes said. “There are things to learn in these seasons if you’re able to identify them and see them for what they are.”
In her brokenness, Osnes found her identity in something deeper: in a greater purpose, a new and truer community, and a restored hope.
A grainy audition video of a young woman with her hair pinned behind her ears floats to mind. Laura, you must start anew. Don’t you know what you must do?
“We’re just beginning to see glimpses of this next chapter. I’m excited to see what else is in store for us here, what things we can create, what new people we're going to meet and what other environments we'll get to belong to that are outside of New York and Broadway,” she said.
“It was wonderful while it lasted, but now we’re being called to something new.”
Grace Bydalek is a Nebraska native living on the Upper West Side. She is the Director of the Dissident Project, a theatre critic for the New York Sun, and an independent journalist focused on culture, politics and faith.
Published in The Conservateur on April 11th, 2023. Photography by Nathan Johnson.