Not only does tonight mark Helen J Shen’s first time attending the Tony Awards, but she’ll also be taking the stage to perform a number from her show Maybe Happy Ending, which received 10 nominations, including for best new musical.
“Every single new echelon of this process has been such a surprise,” Shen tells me over the phone a day earlier. She’s on her break between the Saturday matinee and evening shows, and has to get up early for the award show’s dress rehearsals.
For Sunday’s special occasion, Shen and her stylist, Ashley Afriyie, wanted to make sure it felt like Shen’s character Claire, a helper-bot, was there with them on the red carpet. “Typically, a lot of what I gravitate toward has a rock and roll edge, which is the opposite of Claire,” Shen says. “But something I have learned from playing Claire is that there is a lot of strength in vulnerability and softness. That’s why I was drawn to this Pamela Rolland dress, which has a very feminine and soft silhouette and color. I’m really excited for it to feel like Claire’s on the red carpet too.”
Shen had the same thought when it came to her beauty look (by hairstylist Sky Kim and makeup artist Yoshi Sekimoto): She wanted the freckles that she and Claire share to have a moment at the Tonys, too. “The freckles that Claire has are actually a moment where I wanted to bring Claire and Helen together,” Shen tells me. “I have natural freckles, and growing up I always covered them up. I felt like they were some kind of imperfection—but in adulthood, I have learned to love them and embrace them, and to do it on Broadway is so lovely.”
Her goal with the glam overall is to give all the little girls out there something to look up to: “My face has always been round, and I loved seeing people with round faces doing glam,” she says. “So there’s a part of little Helen that’s really excited to be leading a Broadway show and being in a romantic comedy, being romantic lead, and knowing I don’t look like what I thought that I needed to look like in order to play those kinds of roles and embody that kind of a character.”
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