Michelle Williams. Valerie Terranova/Getty Images
For Michelle Williams, taking a step back from Broadway helped her make her comeback on the Great White Way.
“Back in 2018, I had to leave a Broadway show because of my mental health,” Williams, 45, recalled on the Monday, February 3, episode of Good Morning America. “I thought that door was closed for me to return on Broadway. I thought I blew it. I thought I’d be seen as a liability.”
In December 2018, a rep for Williams announced she would be stepping back from her role as Erzulie in the Broadway revival of Once on This Island due to doctors’ orders. Details about her mental health struggles were not shared at the time of her exit, which occurred less than one month after she and ex-fiancé Chad Johnson called it quits. She was replaced by fellow actress and singer Lea Salonga.
On GMA, Williams noted that she “checked myself into a treatment facility for depression” before she joined the cast of Once on This Island in 2018.
Michelle Williams received support from her Destiny’s Child sisters Beyoncé Knowles and Kelly Rowland at the opening of her new Broadway musical Death Becomes Her. The trio posed together backstage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in photos shared in a reel posted by Beyoncé, 43, on Instagram Saturday, November 23. The “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer and […]
“I was so excited to get back on the Broadway stage. I wasn’t as well as I probably should have been, and it just got to a point where I had to check out of the show, and I didn’t want to do it,” she explained. “To me, that was two blows in the same year — checking into a treatment facility for depression and then checking out of a show still because of it.”
During her break from Broadway, Williams turned her focus to becoming an advocate and a public speaker about mental health. She is also in the process of becoming a certified life coach. (She previously opened up about her struggles with depression in her 2021 book, Checking In.)
Michelle Williams. Good Morning America/YouTube
“I didn’t know where my life was going to go, and I love being able to help people,” she told GMA’s Robin Roberts. “I love helping people make certain life transitions or coaching them out of what I was in. And nothing is wrong with a little pivot. Just don’t twist your ankle.”
Six years after her departure from the stage, Williams got an offer to join the original cast of the Broadway musical Death Becomes Her, which opened in November 2024.
“I don’t know how we’re pulling it off but we are. Every single night, it is funny, it’s laugh-out-loud [funny],” she said of the show, which is based on the 1992 comedy film of the same name. “It’s great to be back when you think that you did wrong or something happened and [you] get another chance.”
In the stage adaptation, Williams plays the mysterious Viola Van Horn. After accepting Viola’s offer of eternal youth and beauty, frenemies Madeline Ashton (Megan Hilty) and Helen Sharp (Jennifer Simard) learn that their wish isn’t exactly what they hoped it would be.
Michelle Williams in ‘Death Becomes Her.’ Death Becomes Her The Musical/YouTube
Former Destiny’s Child members Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland, as well as Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, supported Williams by attending the show’s opening night. “My Belle,” Beyoncé, 43, captioned Instagram photos of the trio at the show along with a sweet backstage video of herself with Williams and Rowland, also 43.
On opening night, Williams exclusively told Us Weekly that she would “love” to see her former bandmates grace the Broadway stage in the future. “I think they’re very capable of starring in a Broadway show — absolutely!” she gushed.
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