Reece Weaver is ready to roll her stockings down, cheat on her husband and kill her lover — but don’t ask her to take the Lord’s name in vain.
Weaver, a breakout star on “America’s Sweethearts,” Netflix’s documentary about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, is hanging up her Lucchese boots for dance heels and making her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in “Chicago.”
“I have never cussed more in my life than these past four weeks,” she said with a giggle.
Though a number of reality stars have taken their turns in the musical’s lead role, Weaver’s casting as a seductress and murderer is a pivot for the former cheerleader, whose Christian faith and unflappable cheeriness have been core to her identity as she has rocketed to fame.
“That’s the one thing I made clear,” Weaver said, sitting outside a coffee shop in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan before a rehearsal. “There’s a few times where Roxie said ‘G.D.,’ and I’m like, ‘I can’t say that.’”
Weaver’s decision to leave the squad this year shocked fans of the show, which chronicles the grueling tryouts and training of the beloved cheerleading squad. Weaver, 25, had an injury in Season 3, but she said her exit was unrelated.
“I wanted to leave more on a note of gratitude and feeling so full,” she said, “rather than, like, a time of maybe feeling a little burnt out.”
It didn’t hurt that the show had jump-started her career as an internet personality, landing her brand deals and millions of followers.
Weaver was on a press tour for “America’s Sweethearts” in June when she was asked if she wanted to audition for “Chicago.” (She shares a talent agency with Whitney Leavitt, the “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star who has also played Roxie Hart on Broadway.) Weaver and her husband, Will Allman, had just purchased a home in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Allman, 26, grew up and where the two met while studying at the University of Alabama.
“We kind of live this Hannah Montana life,” Weaver said. “I’m doing stuff like this. Like, we’re in New York right now. Broadway is so much fun, glamour and all the things. But then we are also, like, these little country folk that love our slow-paced life, and want to have a chicken coop eventually in our backyard.”
Weaver and Allman were still newlyweds when the show premiered, and her sudden fame put a strain on their relationship, she said. It felt as if they had to “start over.”
“I didn’t know how just to navigate my emotions with my reality of trying to be a good wife, trying to be a good teammate, and also people telling me what they think about me on the internet,” Weaver said. “It was just so much.”
She found a therapist and hasn’t looked at Reddit in two years, she said.
Weaver mostly speaks about her time on the squad with unflagging positivity. A hard-won raise for the cheerleaders last year was “a step in the right direction,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s sustainable yet.”
After tearfully hanging up her uniform for the last time, Weaver, along with Allman and their dog, Ruby, left for New York City in August. They brought a few comforts of home to their rental near the Hudson Yards area of Manhattan, including a Crimson Flame scented candle in the living room and their Bibles on the kitchen counter. They’ve been attending church via Zoom while away from home, Weaver said. Allman walks Weaver to and from every rehearsal. She’s so far avoided taking the subway and hopes to never have to, she said.
Weaver studied dance in college, attended a performing arts high school in Jacksonville, Fla., and even recalled teaching a short routine as a high schooler for the iconic “Cell Block Tango” from “Chicago.” But she said the transition to Broadway had been a challenge. In dance rehearsals, she quickly learned that the large, efficient steps for a football field were a bit too much on a smaller stage.
“‘Thunderstruck’ is like, you better haul it to get from here to here,” she said, referring to the squad’s signature routine that ends with jump splits.
Trying something new has required vulnerability and humility. “I’m learning how to vocally project,” Weaver said. “I’m really having to learn to get my voice in, like, a deeper chest voice and not, like, so high like I normally talk.”
Watching her onstage in a rehearsal, Weaver’s dance chops were immediately evident.
“Easy peasy,” she said after two castmates lifted her by her thumbs and spun her around. When it came to singing, the music director encouraged Weaver to widen her mouth, and told her she sounded “wonderful” and not to be so stressed about the high notes.
The longtime “Chicago producer” Barry Weissler took a quiet phone call from his seat in the empty house, holding his phone in front of his face and talking into the microphone. While walking home — Allman came to pick her up, naturally — Weaver said the image had been a bit “triggering.”
“That’s what Kelli and Judy did; that’s what I was used to for three years,” Weaver said, describing how Kelli Finglass and Judy Trammell, the D.C.C. director and the choreographer, would dictate critical voice notes into their phones to be doled out after practice.
Back in their apartment, Allman cooked dinner for Weaver. He caught flak online after Weaver left the cheerleading team, with plenty of people accusing him of making his wife quit and preferring her to be at home in a more traditional role.
At this, Allman laughed as he maneuvered around the small kitchen, boiling peas, searing steaks — dry rubbed earlier that day — and sprinkling sweet potatoes with brown sugar. On social media, he’s begun filming himself making juices for his wife to help her stay hydrated at rehearsal. He calls them “Roxtails.”
While he cooked, Allman took care not to knock over any of the pitchers and vases full of flowers on the counter, props for a brand video Weaver was filming later.
“Nothing in our life is traditional,” he said.
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