She may have been born in Georgia, but Sutton Foster, star of the TV Land and Paramount+ original series "Younger," is a Michigan girl at heart.
"I owe a lot to Michigan," she said recently during a virtual sit-down with Pride Source's Chris Azzopardi. "I went to Troy High. I don't think I would be doing what I do if we hadn't moved to Michigan. There were so many more opportunities there than there were in Georgia."
Foster, 46, made the most of those opportunities. At 15, she appeared on "Star Search." A couple years later she quit high school to join the national tour of "The Will Rogers Follies," directed by Tommy Tune.
But Foster was Broadway bound. A role in the touring production of "Grease" led to her being asked to join the Broadway cast. She would go on to win two leading actress Tonys, the first for playing Millie Dillmount in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" in 2002 and the second for playing Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes" in 2011.
After a successful Broadway career, Foster decided to try her hand in Hollywood. She played the lead in the ABC Family dramedy "Bunheads," but the series was short-lived. The same, thankfully, cannot be said for "Younger." Foster stars as Liza Miller on the show, a 40-year-old divorcee with good genes who decides to reinvent herself as a much younger woman to land a job. She was promoting the series' seventh and final season when she took time out to speak to Pride Source. Inevitably, the topic turned to the impressively diverse cast in "Younger."
"There's been so much education for myself … things that I have learned," she admitted. "Honestly, working with Nico [Tortorella, who identifies as non-binary and plays Foster's love interest] has been unbelievable. Just the conversations we have not only on set but off set. It's been amazing to have non-binary characters on the show. It's been a wonderful thing. … I feel proud to have been on such an inclusive show in that way."
