Marla Mindelle Tells Nikki Glaser Her Unreal Broadway Success Story

Marla Mindelle built Titanique from the ground up: a $75 wig, a Rent the Runway dress, and a premise that had no business working this well: Titanic, hijacked by Celine Dion herself, who insists on explaining what really happened to Jack and Rose entirely through her own songs. After a decade playing around the world, the show, which Mindelle cocreated with Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue, finally made it to Broadway this spring, with Mindelle at the center of it all, playing Dion not as a straight impression but as something closer to a love letter—comedic and reverent in equal measure. This year she became the first woman in Tony history to be nominated for producing, writing, and performing in the same show. But, as she tells Nikki Glaser, the road here was longer and harder-won than any of that makes it sound.

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 12:30 PM, 2026, LOS ANGELES

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MARLA MINDELLE: Hi.

NIKKI GLASER: Hi!

MINDELLE: It’s so nice to finally meet you.

GLASER: Oh my god, you too. I’m so glad that this is how we’re kicking off our friendship.

MINDELLE: I know. Are you in a hotel?

GLASER: I’m in Los Angeles in a hotel room. Where are you?

MINDELLE: In my dressing room. My home away from home. I had it designed. I was like, “Do anything. I don’t care.”

GLASER: They let you do whatever you want in there?

MINDELLE: Kind of, yeah.

GLASER: As they should.

MINDELLE: I live here, I sleep here. They’re going to bury me alive here. I don’t leave this theater. So I had a friend design it because I’m only skilled in theater and nothing else.

GLASER: I so relate to that. Let me talk about the praise you’re getting right now. You’re nominated for three Tonys, and you’re setting a record. What is it?

MINDELLE: I’m the first woman to be triple nominated for the same show.

GLASER: Oh my god.

MINDELLE: When I found that out, I was like, “Wait, really?” I’m so tired that you could tell me I was nominated for 18, and I’d be like, “Oh, cool.”

GLASER: I’ve heard you talk about how you’re trying to let it sink in and trying to have these moments where you really allow yourself to be proud. Is that a struggle for you or is celebrating yourself something you’re good at?

MINDELLE: When this is over, if I had a chance to 5150 myself and lock myself into an asylum, it would hit me. I have such horrible imposter syndrome, which I feel like we probably all do. You get to a certain level and you’re like, “I finally belong, but do I?” But in a strange way, this whole process has been so overwhelming that it’s also been liberating at the same time, because I’m too old for this, and I’m so tired all the time that it frees me on stage to be like, “This is what I’m able to give,” and it’s gotten me out of my own mental prison. So in a weird way, I’ve come full circle because when we first started the show, I was a mess.

GLASER: You’re talking about when you started the show 10 years ago or when you first debuted on Broadway?

MINDELLE: Kind of the whole time. I felt such a sense of imposter syndrome, first of all, because it’s Celine Dion, and to me, she’s the greatest singer in the world. I was like, how will I do this? But then also performing it eight times a week, that’s a whole other battle that no one tells you about. When you go to school for musical theater, you do it for five shows and you’re like, “I could do this forever.” And then you’re doing it eight times a week in front of your peers and in front of celebrities, and it adds this whole other level of pressure that you never expected.

GLASER: So you’re telling me that you were able to finally have the kind of freedom and confidence as a performer you probably always wanted because you are too tired to have anxiety anymore.

MINDELLE: [Laughs] In college, I was so strong headed and I was like, “I’ll see you on Broadway.” And then in my 30s, I left musical theater and went to Hollywood and I was like, “I’m going to make it as a writer.” And I lost everything. I lost all my money, my friends, my sense of self. And so coming back to Broadway now in my 40s, has been this rollercoaster ride where I finally have the confidence that I did in my 20s.

GLASER: I want to touch on having a moment in your 40s, because I’ve had that same experience of having been doing it for over 20 years, and at some point you give up and think it’s not going to happen. And then all of a sudden it happens. I give us some credit for being women who have their biggest moment in their 40s. Usually this happens in your 20s, as a woman in show business.

MINDELLE: And sometimes I wish that it did because then I could still have energy, go out, party.

GLASER: I do miss having the energy.

MINDELLE: Be naturally skinny, have no problems.

GLASER: Did you feel like you accomplished what you needed to accomplish on Broadway to then go pursue a TV writing career? Why would you leave that behind?

MINDELLE: I was very lucky in the sense that I was in three back-to-back long-running Broadway shows. So for eight years of my life, I was eight shows a week, no holidays, no time off. And Broadway is incredible and wonderful and glamorous in many ways, but I realized I had these budding aspirations where I wanted autonomy over my own career and not being a cog in someone else’s wheel. I wanted to write. I had been an aspiring writer since college, fucking around writing scripts with friends. And then I realized that I really liked doing it and I could continue my life in Broadway playing these side characters, or I could take a real risk. When I turned 30, I was like, “I could go to Hollywood and I could try to really do this.”

GLASER: Wow.

MINDELLE: And let me tell you, I pitched 8,000 TV shows. I tried to staff on shows. I was writing movies. I was trying to get celebrities attached for eight years and things would inch up the hill and you’d package something and then it all falls apart. Also L.A. is a vortex where every day is the same and it’s beautiful and you make a little bit of money, but then you lose more money than you’re making. That was my whole trajectory for about a decade. There was this one place that did dinner theater, which no longer exists, and you would make $75 a show and get a glass of wine and that was your treat. And that’s where Titanique was born and bred, which is ironic, because at the time I was like, “I don’t believe in this.” I had lost so much faith in myself. 

GLASER: Was it Constantine [Rousouli] who was your co-creator that was pushing you forward? Do you think it would’ve probably just died?

MINDELLE: It would’ve died. We were doing a musical parody of Scream with all ‘80s songs, and then we did Troop Beverly Hills with all ‘90s songs. And he was like, “What about Titanic with Celine Dion songs?” And for two years I was like, “Nah, I don’t really want to. We’re stupid actors in L.A. We can’t even meet for a coffee. How are we going to write a script?” And then two years later, Trump had just gotten elected, and the director of Titanique, his name is Tye Blue,  was like, “It’s a dark time. We got to do something for fun.” So I was like, “Fine.” If I had 10 minutes here or there, I’d write a little bit of the script and we slapped it together so fast and then I went on Hollywood Boulevard, bought a $75 wig, and rented a dress from Rent the Runway. Connie made all the props.

GLASER: Rent the Runway. Done it so many times.

MINDELLE: So many times. We started this whole journey at the lowest point of my life.

GLASER: When did it click that this might be something?

MINDELLE: It started amassing a cult following in L.A. We would do these pop-up readings at the Dynasty Typewriter or The Wallace, and it was selling out and I was like, “God, is this funny or is this L.A. funny?” So we took it to New York on a whim for a week of readings, and a producer named Eva Price saw it and she was like, “I didn’t want to produce this. I was just coming as a friend and I have to do it now.” And in a week, David Foster’s manager came—and David Foster wrote all of her iconic songs—and Eva was there, and a music lawyer came, and in a week it was all happening. And we were like, “Oh my god, we have to sign contracts.” That was the first moment.

GLASER: Were you scared that you might not be able to license her music?

MINDELLE: One-thousand percent.

GLASER: Has she seen it?

MINDELLE: She has not, but her whole crew and team has. Her sister Claudette saw it in Montreal. Her music publishers, her backup dancers, makeup artist, her physician from Canada—everyone has seen it, and they have all said that she would love it so much, because it’s really a love letter to her.

GLASER: It really is. You do an impression of her that is comedic, but it makes you love her the whole way through. Someone should be so honored to have you portray them, because you can tell what a fan you are, and how hard you’ve worked on mastering what you so respect about her voice and her persona. It’s masterfully done because it’s comedic but not in a way that is mean.

MINDELLE: Thank you.

GLASER: I went after hearing about it on Las Culturistas. Are they producers on it as well?

MINDELLE: Yeah.

GLASER: I remember clocking it like, okay, I have to go see that. So when I was in New York a couple weeks ago for press, my parents were in town, wanted to go to a show and we’re not a musical theater family, but I knew I needed to see it based on what Matt and Bowen had said, and then all the reviews. It exceeded my expectations.

MINDELLE: Thank you.

GLASER: Let’s talk about imposter syndrome. It makes me feel great to hear you have it because when I see someone as great as you have it, it tells me maybe I’m wrong, too. In what world could someone like you have imposter syndrome, who is so obviously talented in all the ways that we measure talent?

MINDELLE: Well, I don’t want to know when anyone is in the audience.

GLASER: God no.

MINDELLE: But when I found that you were, I was like, thank god I didn’t know, because I would’ve been so nervous.

GLASER: I thought you looked at me a couple times, and my friend that went with me is like, “She looked at you.” I felt like I was at Taylor Swift’s concert because you feel at times that she makes eye contact with you. Do you make eye contact with people?

MINDELLE: Oh, everyone.

GLASER: What’s your MO?

MINDELLE: It’s a Celine Dion concert, and if you’ve seen a Celine Dion concert, it’s quite incredible and yet also bizarre. She does stand up or she’s turned on by people. You never know what’s going to come out of her mouth. If you go to a concert, you really think that she’s looking at you. So I do try to look at absolutely everyone, and sometimes I’ll look in the audience and I’ll see Joe Schmo, and sometimes I’ll look in the audience and see Ariana Grande, like I did last week.

GLASER: Oh my god.

MINDELLE: Sometimes I have panic attacks on stage.

GLASER: Like a real panic attack?

MINDELLE: Yes. I think I’ve masked it enough at this point, but mainly I’m so scared that I’m going to be imperfect as Celine. It’s such hard singing.

GLASER: I can’t believe what you do.

MINDELLE: The imposter syndrome comes because I’m 42. The girls that are coming out of school can sing literal circles around me, and everyone gets better and better. I don’t know if you feel like this in the comedy world, where there are new up and coming comedians.

GLASER: Of course.

MINDELLE: Not that there’s any sort of jealousy, but it’s like, “I’m still here. Do people still think that I’m good enough to be doing this?” So that’s really what it comes from. 

GLASER: Is singing something you’re constantly working on and constantly conscious of? I see your humidifier in the back, the tea kettle.

MINDELLE: If they ever opened up my body once I die, they would find just Ricolas.

GLASER: [Laughs] That’s your go-to.

MINDELLE: Yeah. I went back to voice lessons for this.

GLASER: Did that time away from Broadway trying to make it in L.A. as a writer—would Titanique have happened without those 10 years of struggling?

MINDELLE: It would’ve never happened. The style of comedy of Titanique was built out of busted dinner theater and taking risks and not giving a fuck. Had I not gone to L.A. and lost everything except this tiny little show, I would not be here today. 

GLASER: I started in standup, so it was always about, I get to write what I do. I’m really in charge of what I perform and that’s what drew me to it. I found standup comedy at 18, but before that in high school, I wanted to go to theater school and be an actress. It seemed like the only way to do it. And I was feeling unfulfilled. I couldn’t even articulate it, but I didn’t have a lot of autonomy. Now that you’ve had a taste of writing your own material and developing the character you want to develop, is it going to be hard to go back to the way it was? Do you want to write more now?

MINDELLE: I feel like I know too much about the other side. I know too much about producing and the economics of a Broadway show. I know too much about casting and what goes on behind the scenes. It would be great to have a mixture of both. I’ve always wanted to be kind of what Tina Fey has become, like a musical Tina Fey. She’s able to write, she’s able to star in some things, she’s able to write a musical, not be in it. She can weave in and out of all of the mediums, and that would be ideal.

GLASER: It’s been 10 years of your show, correct?

MINDELLE: Yeah.

GLASER: Did you think it was going to be this traveling show and that it was maybe never going to get to Broadway? 

MINDELLE: Totally. We were doing it at old UCB in the basement of a—

GLASER: Oh, yes.

MINDELLE: I don’t know if you remember that place.

GLASER: For sure.

MINDELLE: It’s now been blown to smithereens. It’s condos, but it was a disgusting basement with rats and trash juice. And when it started there, it blew up and I had never seen anything like it. Imagine what Oh, Mary! felt like at the Lucille Lortel. And so I just thought, we’re going to go to Broadway. And it didn’t for a really long time. For about three years we were Off-Broadway, and then it went all over the world. But it wasn’t going to Broadway. So I was like, “Maybe this is just the journey for the show, and I have to accept the fact that this is still a huge success”. So I really had to recalibrate and let go of it. And it was a mourning process. I left the show after a year Off-Broadway and I was like, I guess that’ll just be my time with it and that’s it.

GLASER: You left the show thinking that was your last show?

MINDELLE: Yeah, and I had to be in the auditions and cast the next Celine Dion and they’re all fantastic and phenomenal, but it felt like a piece of me was heartbroken. I was giving over my baby and watching it become this commercial entity. Oh man, when I left the show, I cried every day.

GLASER: I’m so confused. Why would you have to leave it? 

MINDELLE: When you do a Broadway show or an Off-Broadway show for a year, it’s like dog years. It’s like you’ve done it for seven years.

GLASER: Got it. So it’s just burn out.

MINDELLE: Yeah. But also, to the producer’s credit, they wanted to see if it could run with a former Elphaba playing Celine Dion and not me. You want to make sure that it can withstand the test of anyone doing it.

GLASER: That’s so interesting . I didn’t understand that part.

MINDELLE: So I cried every day and I was like, “Lord, please, please give me another opportunity.” And then Lorne Michaels had seen the show, so Connie and I got to test for SNL and I was like, “Maybe SNL is going to be my calling.” And then it didn’t pan out, which is absolutely fine. But it’s just been little things where I’m like, “Oh, this is it. This is it. No, it’s not.” But I feel like that’s everyone’s career too. It’s not going to be all upswing. 

GLASER: Does this kind of success feel the same way that you always thought it would?

MINDELLE: No one prepares you for what making it is going to feel like, because inevitably sometimes you don’t feel like you’ve made it. Or you’ve made it, but it comes at an enormous cost of not having any time for yourself. For as much good as there is, there’s also kind of bad, and that’s okay because it’s made me realize that nothing is ever going to be all good and nothing is ever going to be all bad, and accepting the moment for what it is is actually the key to surviving all of this. 

GLASER: Yeah. What does practicing gratitude look like for you?

MINDELLE: It’s been a lot of letting go. I think I must have musical theater OCD.

GLASER: One note can ruin the whole show for you.

MINDELLE: Correct. One note. I cracked in the opening number yesterday and I wanted to die on stage, which is so stupid.

GLASER: And then you had the whole rest of the show to do.

MINDELLE: Yeah.

GLASER: I feel the same way. If you fuck up, you want it to be at the end of the show so you’re not thinking about it the whole time. Can we talk about what your schedule looks like? I want to understand what a week of work looks like for you. 

MINDELLE: The good news is that I’m middle-aged so you’d have to carry my dead body to a bar. Essentially you have to live a little bit like a nun. Maybe one drink a week, but I talk a lot more than most people. You’re going to lunch after lunch and you’re doing all these events. Then people are coming backstage, and then you’re signing autographs and playbills. In order to get through the day, I literally have to rot like a corpse for an hour and meditate and try to sleep. I tried to put on the Summer House reunion last night, but it wasn’t on Peacock yet, but there’s usually Real Housewives at midnight and I pass out to it, and I wake up to Real Housewives in the morning.

GLASER: Have you learned the art of no yet? Do you feel like you deserve to say that yet? 

MINDELLE: No, I don’t think I have. This is the first time that I’ve had even a publicist or a stylist. But people keep saying, “You can say no, but it’d be really nice for you to be there.”

GLASER: “It’s really a good one to do.” You’ve mentioned a couple times having to be a certain body type. As women who are now hitting our stride in our early 40s, I’m obsessed with it too. I need to look a certain way now that more eyes are on me. If I’m going to a red carpet, I have to look like Hailey Bieber.

MINDELLE: You do!

GLASER: Well, because of the team of people that I’ve given instructions on what exactly to do, and because of the hours of hair and makeup that I have to sit in, which I’m beginning to resent deeply. Do you do your own glam for the show?

MINDELLE: Oh yeah, I slap it on. It takes me 10 minutes.

GLASER: Really?

MINDELLE: A ton of contour because Celine contours the shit out of her face, and a ton of highlighter, and shitty eyelashes.

GLASER: I’m ignorant about this, but does everyone do their own makeup on Broadway?

MINDELLE: Pretty much. Maybe not if you’re a huge celebrity or it’s special effects makeup. But for me, that’s just a part of it. But in terms of actual hair and makeup, that’s new for me, too. And it’s like two hours every day.

GLASER: It’s so much time.

MINDELLE: And I could sleep for those two hours, but I can’t do my own eyelashes.

GLASER: No, and I’ve tried. I’ve been to a red carpet where I’m like, “I can get this done in 20 minutes as opposed to the hour and a half.” And so you do it yourself and that’s a deep regret of mine, showing up at that Ted Lasso premiere having done my own makeup where I was like, “You can just tell.” After that appearance, I’m like, “I hope I don’t die tragically because they’ll use the last Getty image that exists.” That’s one thing I’ve come to resent in this business: Once you make it, every single appearance you have, you have to be styled, you have to have glam done. Some people can just enter into this new A-list tier of celebrity and know exactly what they want to look like and want to wear, but I dress like shit in real life.

MINDELLE: Me too.

GLASER: So I need to rely on professionals all the time. It’s costly and my back hurts from sitting.

MINDELLE: You’re looking better and better. I keep taking screenshots of you being like, “Can you make me look like that?”

GLASER: And then figuring out, “Okay, this facelift that seems imminent—where in my schedule am I going to have six months to take off and heal?

MINDELLE: You do not need a facelift. That’s crazy.

MINDELLE: Well, not yet, but eventually we all could use it.

GLASER: Well eventually, sure. And looking at women that have had it done, I go, “When did they have time?” Because once you make it in this business, you do not have time. And I doubt that you will either.

MINDELLE: I can’t even get a face laser. I have one day off a week. Every single day off I have, I go to either Brooklyn Bathhouse or Great Jones Spa and steam for what feels probably like five hours. I’m in a hot sauna, cold sauna, wet sauna. Then I take myself out for a nice meal. I have one glass of wine and whatever the fuck I want to eat, because I can’t really eat during the week because I’m panicked. I don’t want to eat a burger and then go sing.

GLASER: We have to wrap up, but I want to talk about the sacrifice of how hard you worked and what you’ve maybe put on the back burner. People always give me credit like, “You haven’t had kids and you don’t have a family because you chose a career.” I don’t think I ever chose my career over it. I didn’t even think about those things and I don’t know if I am putting them on the back burner, because everything’s still going so fast that I don’t have time to even think about having it. Do you feel like you’ve made a choice of whether or not you want a family?

MINDELLE: I have a girlfriend of two and a half years now, but we don’t have kids. With my career, I always thought that would come first, and it’s very interesting now because so many of my peers are all married and have homes and children. I don’t have any of that. I can’t afford a home. I don’t think I can afford a child, but things are going so fast that I don’t even have time to really think about if it’s something that would be life altering or something that I want. I’ve always said that if my partner really, really wanted to have a child, it would be a longer conversation, and I have a feeling my girlfriend is going to turn 39 and be like, “Yep, I’m ready. I want them.” I don’t know if it’s in my future, but I do feel like it has been an extraordinary sacrifice. Whereas other women have settled down and gone that route, it’s always been this kind of one track mind for me. And I do wonder if there’s going to be a moment where I regret that or if I’m like, “Well, this has been my baby and this is my child.” I don’t know.

GLASER: I’ve never had a desire to be a mom, and I wonder when the attention dies down or my drive dies down, will that feeling of wanting to be a mom suddenly come in when I’m 45 and maybe it’s definitely too late. I’ve kind of always flown by the seat of my pants of like, “Well, I’ll deal with it then.” I didn’t freeze my eggs. I maybe attempted to one time, but I felt weird about it because I was like, I’m doing this for future me and present me doesn’t want kids and I don’t think future me is going to want them. So I was overwhelmed by it. But it sounds like you’ve wanted this and been going after this your entire life.

MINDELLE: I have, but I would’ve never, ever, ever predicted this.

GLASER: How could you? But I’m so excited for what you do next and I hope that we can actually be friends.

MINDELLE: Me too.

GLASER: Over the summer I would love to hang out with you for a dinner on your one night off.

MINDELLE: That would be a dream come true. You are such a comedy icon and a touchstone for me. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.