This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.Juliette Lewis Is Ready for her Broadway Debut—and Whatever Else the Universe Wants

Christopher BarnardThu, April 23, 2026 at 4:00 PM UTC

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Juliette Lewis Makes Her Broadway DebutJoan Marcus

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“I always look for those cosmic connections,” says Juliette Lewis over Zoom, her two dogs, Lenny and Hank, spilling out of her lap. Lewis, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actress known for Cape Fear,Natural Born Killers, and Showtime’s grisly hit series Yellowjackets, is explaining what led her to the revival of The Rocky Horror Show currently on Broadway, where she plays Magenta, the antic handmaiden to Luke Evans’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

About a month before she got the call from director Sam Pinkleton last year, she was asked, totally unrelated, to contribute to a book by rock ’n’ roll photographer Mick Rock celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Rocky Horror film; it was an alignment she interpreted as an indisputable sign to say yes. She was also eager to work with Pinkleton after seeing Oh, Mary!, which garnered the director a Tony Award.

And like many artistic misfits who came of age in the 1980s, Lewis, 52, has core memories of her first encounter with Rocky Horror.

“My brother snuck me into the movie when I was a kid. But it was so vivid, it felt like it was happening in real time. And I thought, how do I get there with these people? Everything about it was fantastical and extreme.”

The original musical by Richard O’Brien was staged in London’s West End in 1973, before the 1975 film version starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, and Barry Bostwick. It is the tale of two hapless squares, Brad and Janet, who stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a cross-dressing mad-scientist alien from the planet Transexual who is throwing a party to reveal his newest creation: Rocky, a blond-haired muscle god. The piece is a hedonistic fantasia of sex, glitter, and grotesquerie that mixes ’50s B-movie camp and a dash of ’30s Busby Berkeley spectacle. Curry’s delicious turn as the lingerie-clad doctor in platform heels and pearls—with garish glam by Pierre La Roche—was a template for the louche gender ambiguity that seeped into ’70s culture, both menacing and liberating. In short order, the film became a cult classic, spawning midnight showings at theaters all over the world that continue to this day and a devoted audience that dresses in costume and recites lines.

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Joan Marcus

Lewis’s Magenta is one of the doctor’s lieutenants in his den of debauchery. “I’m playing an alien pretending to be human that loves to throw wild parties. Sam calls her the lady of the house,” she explains. In a fright wig and Luisa Casati maquillage, Lewis creeps and scurries around the stage of Studio 54 with lurid ease. Though this is her Broadway debut, the actress is quite at home on a rock ’n’ roll stage. Some may remember her early-aughts band, Juliette and the Licks. “We had this delicious chemistry that you can’t just bottle up and make with everybody you play with, but they’re all in other bands,” she says, adding that she has some unfinished original music still kicking around. “I’m open to what the universe presents and provides.” Being on stage has also rekindled her desire to work on the one-woman show—with music of course—she has been developing for the past several years. “I don't know what shape that’ll take later… if it will be a movie first, because I did write the script. Or if I’ll do my own show.” She loosely describes it as a mix of the “fantastical and grounded.” She continues, “I sort of liken it to a sober state with psychedelia in it.”

Right now, she is figuring out how New York works for her as she settles into the three-month run (just extended to July 19), an adjustment from her more pastoral small-town life in Southern California. “I like nature. It’s how I thrive: nature, space, quiet”—three things this city is not known for, but she makes up for it by indulging in long, meandering walks late at night to expel some of the post-show energy, and spending as much time in Central Park as possible. “It’s magic. You can wander in there and really have a reprieve. It’s bliss,” she says. She even has a favorite cookie spot, Cookie Odyssey on 74th Street and 2nd Avenue, which is part of her “decadence circuit,” she says, laughing.

Between rehearsals, which continue until the show opens this week, Lewis has been busy promoting Over Your Dead Body, an action comedy she stars in that opens in theatres this week. She’s also been getting into books that deal with the end of life, like Nothing to Fear by Julie McFadden. “I’m in my 50s. I’m wanting to navigate death with grace, not even my own,” she explains. “I’m just curious of that space because I’ve lost people. I’ve lost friends early because of cancer, my father. So this is an area I’m really interested in.”

Self-creation, reinvention, and even death are just a few themes that Pinkleton’s cast of the 2026 revival explore each night at Studio 54. (At one point, a cut-out moon descends upon the alien revelers, a nod to the original disco’s “Moon and Spoon” cheeky set piece.) Along with Evans and Lewis, Rachel Dratch stars as the Narrator, Amber Gray as Riff Raff, Michaela Rodriguez as Columbia, Stephanie Hsu as Janet, Andrew Durand as Brad, and Josh Rivera as Rocky. The production zips by at a glittery clip, and a handful of people each night participate in the piece’s call-and-response tradition, a joyful if uniquely delicate challenge for the actors on stage. “There’s been some navigation there because if it’s too much, it comes off like heckling. But there’s a sweet spot,” Lewis says. “It’s part of the show that’s really funny and fun, and there’s a rhythm in it. It’s an element of the staying power of the piece that’s endured for 50 years because of this call-out culture and because of the late-night screenings. But we're also very much doing a play, and we want people to receive it and allow it to breathe and be as a stage play.”

Joan Marcus

She describes the ensemble’s approach to the revival as “everyone waving their magic wand across the origin story and characters and putting their own little flourishes where they can.”

Though Evans is the main event—his swaggering Frank-N-Furter is one of the most thrilling performances of the season—Lewis brings an otherworldly glamour to Magenta that feels new. At the evening’s close, it is Lewis as the Usherette who is tasked with bringing the audience back to earth. In one of the more tender moments of the show, she renders “Science Fiction Double Feature” as a kind of lullaby. “Before the lights go out and we do our bow, I always feel like I’m giving everyone a really sweet, warm hug,” she says. “It reminds me of the heartbreak of life, that even though people you love are going to die or get sick or things may not go the way you had envisioned or planned, it’s still worth living. We want to leave them with a feeling of hope and excitement toward adventure.”

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