Lindsay Heather Pearce Thinks "Les Misérables" Could Change Your Life

Ahead of the musical's Fort Worth performances, we chat with the experienced Broadway actor about the timeless message of "Les Miz," what it's like to take on one of her dream roles, and why she never answers her phone.

by

Culture

We last spoke with Lindsay Heather Pearce in 2022 when the first national tour of Broadway’s “Mean Girls” rolled into town. At the time, Pearce was taking on her first touring role following a two-year stint on Broadway as Elphaba in the massively popular “Wicked.” A role she — along with every other girl who’s a self-described “theater nerd” — has dreamed of playing.

But Pearce, whose impressive resume includes stage, television, and film roles, had long dreamed of playing another celebrated role: Fantine, the tragic, tuberculosis-ridden mother willing to sacrifice everything for her daughter in “Les Misérables.”

What is sure to be a rarity in the competitive world of Broadway, Pearce is now able to check both dream roles off her list. In October 2024, Pearce began playing the part of Fantine on the “Les Misérables” national tour, which will kick off its eight Fort Worth performances tomorrow night at Bass Performance Hall.

The musical, based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo, takes place during the French revolution and follows Jean Valjean, a former convict pursued by an obsessive inspector, Javert. Following the prologue, Valjean crosses paths with Fantine and her daughter, Cosette, which sets off much of the story’s action. “Les Misérables,” often colloquially referred to as “Les Miz,” opened on Broadway in 1987 and won eight Tonys. After closing in 2003, the musical had notched 6,680 performances, the sixth most all time. "Les Miz" would also see revivals in 2006 and 2014, and “I Dreamed a Dream,” performed by Fantine in the musical, has been covered by a litany of Billboard-topping artists.

Despite being on tour, we got a chance to chat with Pearce before the show swings by Fort Worth. A devoted fan of “Les Misérables” herself, Pearce waxed poetic about the musical’s importance, staying power, and why Javert isn’t such a bad guy.

Lindsay Heather Pearce: [Pearce calls back immediately after my initial attempt to reach her.] So sorry, my phone didn’t even ring.

FW: No worries!

Pearce: My phone is always on “Do Not Disturb” because of theater and I never want my phone to ring, or I would jump off a balcony, so I'm so sorry.

FW: It’s all good! So, do you perform sometimes with your phone in your pocket?

Pearce: No, no, no, no, no. It's a force of habit. Ever since I got into theater and had a cell phone it was always on silent. And then the iPhone developed the “Do Not Disturb,” and that means nothing gets through no matter what.

Now, when I did “Mean Girls,” we were allowed to have Apple Watches on our wrists so long as they were in theater mode. That way, if we moved our wrists around, they wouldn’t light up the blackouts, which would happen too often.

FW: That’s right, the last time you spoke with us, you were in the traveling troupe for “Mean Girls” playing Janis. And now you’re playing Fantine in “Les Misérables,” which is one of the more classic Broadway shows. It’s up there in that pantheon, right?

Pearce: Absolutely. One, it's a Cameron Mackintosh, who also [produced] “Phantom of the Opera.” I’m talking like it's a car — it's a Cameron Mackintosh.

It’s one of those long-lived juggernauts that’s always been playing somewhere. The only other musicals that have been playing as long are “The Lion King” and “Wicked,” and “Hamilton” is getting up there, too. There is something about “Les Miz.” It is just so beloved.

And this is coming from someone who loves it. I've loved it since I was a child, and it was one of the first professional musicals I ever saw — I saw it on tour in San Francisco when I was 14 with my mom. And this is very much like my “Wicked” experience, which I saw when I was 17, where I said, “I have to be in this someday. I have to be in this.”  

FW: And now you’ve been in both.

Pearce: I know! Can you believe that? That's bananas to me.

FW: And both Fantine in “Les Miserables” and Elphaba in “Wicked” have become such well-known and important characters. I suppose they’ve also entered this pantheon of great Broadway characters. So, how do you take such a well-known and important role and make it your own?

Pearce: Maybe this is going to sound like a cop-out answer, but I think it's so subjective. I'm sure someone could watch me and say, “I've seen that version of Fantine 10,000 times.” I feel like these characters are so universal, so fleshed out yet vague in a really healthy way that you can put anyone’s face and experience on it and go, “I know someone who’s been through that,” or “I’ve been through that,” or “I know someone who is currently going through that.” [The characters] go through so much and feel so much, and they just want to be connected so badly, and they believe so hard in what they believe in. “Les Misérables,” more so than any other show I have personally been in, is about the human experience.

I don't know what it is that makes what I do with the role different from anyone else, except that I'm the only one who's gone through my particular brand of life, and even that is still under the umbrella of so many other people's experiences. I don't think I've ever truly understood how best to answer that question. So, respectfully, I have no idea, but I'm doing my best.

FW:  Something I can't help but notice is the three roles you've performed on Broadway, Janis in “Mean Girls,” Elphaba in “Wicked,” and now “Fantine,” there are some similarities in these characters. They're all people who have been outcast by society in some way. Is there something that draws you to those parts?

Pearce: I don't know if it's what draws me, but I know that it's a universal female experience. And I think, as a woman specifically, it's easy to feel set aside if you're not fitting a mold of what is expected of you societally. It's hard for a woman to make a mistake socially and be able to bounce back easily. It's just the way a lot of things have been designed specifically in our culture.

And the fact that it’s such a specific trope (the rejection of women who are different in any way) shows that it’s such a universal experience. If your skin is green and you have magical powers, people want to burn you. And if you’re not part of the alphabet soup community like Janis, and you wear purple lipstick and make weird art and like to wear Maleficent horns and hang out with the queer musical theater guy, people are going to ostracize you. And if you're an unwed mother, people are going to fire you from your job.

I personally would love to see more stories of women just having the time of their lives. I really would. And I know there are shows like that out there, but I do believe it’s important to hammer home that this is what a lot of people, not just women, go through.

FW: And you’ve been in the industry so long. You’ve done TV, reality TV, film, stage, etc. [Pearce first got on the nation's radar in 2011, when the then-20-year-old actress and singer was a contestant on the reality show "The Glee Project." Her run to the finals subsequently led to a two-episode arc on "Glee."] So, I’m assuming, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you’ve experienced some of these hardships you speak of.

Pearce: I think the only thing I missed was [being a] Disney/Nickelodeon child star. And I don't say that with any malice at all. I got a tiny taste of that with that good old reality TV show I did when I was 19.

FW: “The Glee Project,” right.

Pearce: You learn a lot really quickly about the world when you're thrust into stuff like that. And not to keep tying it back to “Les Miz,” but boy oh boy does Fantine go through the same damn thing. She's, like, “I kind of thought I knew about the world, and now I really know about the world.”

I think a lot of us can relate to that kind of feeling. Think about when you left home for the first time, and you had these hopes and dreams, these grand ideas and expectations of what you thought life was going to be. And then you get into the real world, and life backhands you into next Tuesday. We didn't know it was going to be this rough but also this exciting and wonderful, and yet this terrible. You’re learning about life and, unfortunately, in the century that “Les Miz” takes place, life is knocking you down, and it keeps knocking you down.

FW: It is interesting how, even today, society has its Fantines and its Valjeans and even its Javerts.

Pearce: Absolutely. Javert is one of my favorite characters, and “Stars” is my favorite song in the show. I love Javert; I just want to give him a big hug.

For anyone who’s coming to see “Les Miz,” I urge you, urge you to listen to the words in the first confrontation that [Valjean and Javert] have over my dead body, quite literally over my dead body. Javert comes into the hospital, or the nunnery, where Fantine’s being cared for and confronts Jean Valjean, and he literally says, “You know nothing of Javert. I was born inside a jail. I was born to scum like you, I am from the gutter too.” And I can see the little boy that is Javert who just wants his life to be different. You see it all the time, people raised in tough circumstances who either fall into those same circumstances or swing too hard in the opposite direction and forget where they've come from.

I genuinely think that's why “Les Miz” is so beloved: You can find yourself in any melting pot of all these characters. Because [the musical] about humanity and the human experience. I mean, one of the last lyrics in the show is “To love another person, is to see the face of God.” And that is the message of the show

FW: The first time I saw “Les Miz,” I was quite young and with my mom, and I remember calling Javert the “bad guy,” and she corrected me. I remember her saying, “He’s not bad, he’s just misguided,” and she explained to me his plight. And she’s right. Took me a minute to realize the main antagonist is the society under which they live, which did even Javert dirty.

Pearce: God bless your mom for that, truly.

Javert really does think he's doing the right thing. And most of the audience is with him and understands, which is why his downfall is so devastating because everything that he thinks to be true and righteous ends up being completely thwarted by someone (Valjean) who has changed his life around and is [not the man he assumed].

FW: I think you’ve already answered this next question in every way possible with your previous responses, but I’ll ask anyway. Given our current climate (political and otherwise) why do you think it’s important for Fort Worthians to attend Les Misérables — even if they’ve seen it countless times?

Pearce: I think it is going to always be important. (Voice quivers) Oh, there we go. Just got emotional. Oh, you've done it now.

FW: Sorry.

Pearce: No, it’s okay. It's just because I love people regardless of where they're coming from, even if I don't agree with them and they don't agree with me, because I truly do believe everyone should be treated equally and everyone should be given the same amount of respect.

It doesn't matter what position in politics you have, whether you have launch codes or you're on the street due to whatever circumstance, I believe every human being's life matters. I don’t care where you’re from, who you love, what you look like, or who you worship. My deepest desire is to love other people and help them feel less alone, which is why I do the work I do.

And if [Les Misérables] does nothing else, it encourages empathy and compassion. Even if that doesn’t follow audience members from the theater to their own front door, if Les Misérables can plant the seeds of human compassion, even if they never bloom, at least it sowed them. And that's something that I deeply, deeply believe in and do my best to practice in my own life.

Tickets are extremely limited. For best availability, contact the Performing Arts Fort Worth Box Office at [email protected] or 817.212.4280.