Megan Hilty

Stage and television actress and singer Megan Hilty first gained widespread attention through her Broadway portrayals of Glinda in Wicked and Doralee Rhodes in 9 to 5: The Musical, as well as her portrayal of Ivy Lynn in the NBC series Smash. She entered the world in Bellevue, Washington, began vocal instruction at twelve, and completed her secondary studies at Redmond’s Washington Academy of Performing Arts Conservatory High School. Following her diploma from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, she relocated to New York City and stepped onto a Broadway stage for the first time in August 2004, serving as standby for Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in the Oz-themed musical Wicked, itself drawn from Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. She assumed the lead in 2005, concluded that engagement in 2006, and then embodied Glinda once more during the show’s inaugural national tour and in a fixed Los Angeles mounting that occupied 2007 and 2008. Toward the close of 2008 she entered the cast of the stage adaptation of the 1980 film 9 to 5, taking the role of executive secretary Doralee Rhodes originally performed by Dolly Parton. The score, written by Parton, reunited Hilty with her former Wicked colleagues actress Stephanie J. Block and director Joe Mantello while also introducing Allison Janney and Marc Kudisch; her work as Doralee brought nominations from the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Drama League Awards, and the Drama Desk Awards. Concurrently she amassed an array of television appearances that spanned children’s programming such as The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Phineas and Ferb, animated comedies including American Dad!, Family Guy, and Louie, and live-action dramas like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Desperate Housewives. In February 2012 she assumed the part of veteran stage performer Ivy Lynn in Smash, the series depicting the creation of a Broadway musical centered on Marilyn Monroe; the duet “Let Me Be Your Star,” shared with co-star Katharine McPhee, earned Emmy and Grammy nominations that same year. Smash returned for a second season at the start of 2013, the same period that saw the arrival of Hilty’s first solo album, It Happens All the Time, whose tracks included material by Damien Rice, Ne-Yo, and Carrie Underwood. In 2016 she issued A Merry Little Christmas, a set of seasonal standards captured live at the Carriage House in Stamford, Connecticut.