Happy Birthday to triple Tony nominee Sherie Rene Scott, born Feb. 8, 1967, in Kentucky. When she was 4, her family moved to Kansas, where she graduated from Topeka West High School. From a young age, Scott was active in Topeka theater, including the title role in the 1978 Washburn University staging of A Day In the Death of Joe Egg when she was 11. When she was 15, Scott attended a summer acting program in New York, moving to the city three years later to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse School. One of her first jobs after graduating was the 1990 tour of Teenage Mutual Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells. Below is a clip of Scott in that show, singing “April’s Ballad.”
In 1993, she made her Broadway debut in Tommy, followed by replacement roles in Grease (1995) and Rent (1997), where she met frequent costar Norbert Leo Butz. In 1998, she landed her breakthrough role of Amneris in the world premiere of Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida, retitled Aida by the time it opened on Broadway in 2000. For that show, Scott earned the Clarence Derwent Award for most promising female actor, while her single “A Step Too Far” from the concept album peaked at #15 on Billboard’s adult contemporary chart. Below are Scott with Aida costars Adam Pascal and Heather Headley singing that song on the Apr. 20, 2000, episode of The View.
In 2000, Scott and husband Kurt Deutsch founded the record label Sh-K-Boom, which released her solo album Men I’ve Had. She then made her Off-Broadway debut in 2002 with The Last Five Years, opposite Butz, earning her first Drama Desk nomination. (She had a cameo in the 2014 film adaptation.) Below is Scott singing “Goodbye Until Tomorrow” on the May 30, 2002, episode of The Rosie O’Donnell Show, accompanied by composer Jason Robert Brown.
In summer 2002, she and Butz costarred in two workshop presentations of Next to Normal, and in fall 2002, Scott returned Off-Broadway in the title role of the musical Debbie Does Dallas. In 2004, Scott and her husband founded a second label, Ghostlight Records, winning a 2006 Drama Desk Award “for dedication to the preservation of musical theatre through cast recordings.” In 2005, Scott reunited with Butz for the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, earning Tony and Drama Desk nominations. Below is Scott singing her entrance song, “Here I Am,” from the original Broadway production.
In 2005, Scott recorded the concept album of Bright Lights, Big City, and in 2006, she starred in the Off-Broadway revival of the play Landscape of the Body, earning Obie and Lucille Lortel awards. She returned to Broadway as Ursula in the 2007 stage adaptation of The Little Mermaid, followed in 2010 by Everyday Rapture, which she cowrote with Dick Scanlan, whom she had met when he worked on the liner notes for her 2002 solo album. She received her second and third Tony nominations (as well as Drama Desk and Lortel nods) for her book and her performance. Below is Scott with Lindsay Mendez and Betsy Wolfe singing the show’s finale, “Up the Ladder to the Roof,” at the 2010 Tony Awards.
In the past decade, Scott’s musical work has included the 2010 Broadway premiere of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Drama Desk nomination), the 2012 show Piece of Meat (which she cowrote with Todd Almond), the 2015 Off-Broadway musical Whorl Inside a Loop (which she cowrote with Scanlan), and the 2019 cabaret Twohander (working with Almond, Scanlan, and Butz). Below is Scott singing “Lovesick” from Women on the Verge.