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katharine mcphee takes center stage in smash

Katharine McPhee has gone from American Idol to Broadway baby. Danielle Nussbaum checks in with the Smash star.

I'm sitting front row at the "pre-Broadway tryout" of Bombshell, aka The Marilyn Monroe Musical, and I can't believe my luck. It doesn't get better than this. Except it does: I'm actually on the set of NBC's hit Broadway drama Smash, watching Katharine McPhee, Megan Hilty, and three primary-color-clad chorus girls dance and sing their way through a scene from the fictional musical for an upcoming episode. And they are killing it.

Kat has been tirelessly shaking her booty onstage for almost four hours, so when she finally has a chance to chat, I demand to know how she stays in such good shape. "I'm actually in so much pain right now," she says, laughing. "There's a lot of dancing, but it's not in every episode. It's kicking my butt. With this crazy schedule, I really crave healthy things that are lower in sugar, loaded in protein."

Whatever she's doing, it's working. The 28-year-old triple threat, who rose to fame after placing second in season five of American Idol, releasing three albums, and appearing in the 2008 comedy The House Bunny, is TV's newest ingenue. It didn't happen overnight; her path had as many twists, turns, ups, and downs as an episode of Smash.

"My first music memory is this image of me on my floor in our hallway, listening to Mariah Carey on my little cassette player, rewinding it over and over," Kat says. "I really studied her riffing and the soulful part of her voice." By the time she hit sixteen, Kat had given up on the idea of being a pop star. "I didn't know myself musically," she says. "Acting became my main passion—until Idol came, and I was like, 'Oh, I might win! Oh, I have a record deal,' so my focus shifted. But I always wanted to do straight acting."

Luckily—for her and for us—now Kat doesn't have to abandon any of these goals. "I'm getting this amazing opportunity to live my dream through the show: my dream of being on Broadway one day, which I assume, knock on wood, I'll have the opportunity to do," she says. "For the moment, I'm living through the show."

Source: http://www.teenvogue.com/industry/blogs/entertainment#ixzz1yC0KKB00