4.9 • 15.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
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0:00.0 | Hello friend, welcome. So fun to have you here today. I am chatting with somebody who definitely, whether she knows it or not, impacted my childhood. She was the voice of Ariel, the little mermaid in the Disney movie. Her |
0:17.9 | name is Jody Benson and I'm really excited to share this conversation with you so let's dive in. I'm Sharon |
0:26.8 | McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. I'm very pleased to be chatting with Joni Benson today. |
0:35.0 | Hello, thank you so much for having me. |
0:38.0 | I really appreciate it. |
0:39.0 | Oh, well, I was talking to my sister about this upcoming interview and she was like I saw the little mermaid six times in the theater. |
0:48.8 | So I would love to hear first of all take us back to the beginning. How did you even get started? |
0:57.5 | Because it wasn't like you just waltzed in one day and you're like, hey, I'd like to be Ariel. |
1:01.8 | You had a lot of experience before landing this role so I'd love to hear more about |
1:07.2 | your background. |
1:09.2 | Well I grew up in Illinois and a kid that just loved to sing and be part of anything I could be a part of as far as theater goes. |
1:17.0 | So I was probably eight years old I guess when I told my mom I really want to pursue singing, dancing and acting acting and I want to make a living at this. |
1:25.0 | I don't want to be famous. I don't want to be rich. I just want to do what I love and be able to pay the bills. |
1:31.0 | So I don't know where that came from because I hadn't seen a Broadway show or anything like that, but that was really my heart's desire. So I just grabbed any kind of opportunity I could in Illinois |
1:43.2 | and then went to college and that's really |
1:45.6 | where I had my first chance to have voice lessons |
1:48.5 | and dance classes and experiences like that. |
1:51.6 | Left in the middle of school to work professionally, made my way to New York, I was 19, |
1:57.0 | got my equity card, started doing a national tour of a show, and just kind of started doing it and just fell in love with the whole aspect of musical theater. |
2:10.0 | So I was starring in a Broadway show called Smile with Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlish. |
2:15.1 | And my leading character, Doria, had a song that was written for her name Disneyland, |
2:20.0 | a beautiful song called Disneyland. And the show tragically closed really early after some horrible New York Times reviews but such a great experience of four years going through that show creating the role and doing all of our |
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