To successively list the impressive theater credits that Gypsy star Joy Woods has amassed, back-to-back, by age 24 would require the breath control of, well, an energetic young Broadway dynamo like Joy Woods.
She was studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York when, at 19, she was in 2019’s revival of Little Shop of Horrors, playing Chiffon, one of the Urchins. She made her Broadway debut as Catherine Parr in the musical Six in 2022. After a quick stop playing Deena Jones in Dreamgirls—as in the Beyoncé role—she returned to Little Shop of Horrors in the lead role of Audrey, the first Black actress to ever play the part off-Broadway.
Woods spent most of last year starring as Middle Allie in the Broadway production of The Notebook, where in addition to reducing audiences to sobbing puddles of tears each night, she achieved a rare musical theater milestone: going viral on mainstream TikTok for her Simone Biles-esque vocal gymnastics in the show’s 11 o’clock number.
no thoughts, just @Joy 🌞 performing #mydays from NotebookMusical. you’re welcome 💙 #joywoods #TheNotebook #notebookbroadway #ingridmichaelson #mydayscover
From there, she went directly to rehearsals for Gypsy, where now, eight shows a week, her scene partner is American theater’s arguably most celebrated actress, Audra McDonald, in American theater’s arguably most celebrated musical.
“When it’s all listed off to me, I feel very tired,” Woods told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed in a recent Zoom call from her dressing room. She looks down at the guitar she’s holding throughout our interview, plucks a few strings, and laughs sheepishly.
“I feel very sleepy, and the back-to-back of it all has really worn me out,” she continues. “I’m not as young as I was when I started Little Shop at 19. I mean, I’m not old or grown even now, but I have not had any breaks.”
She eyes a paper on her dressing room table: a vacation request form. “I’m going to fill out, and it’s gonna be my first vacation ever. I feel like you can only give so much before you need to give back to yourself and just take time. I’m happy that I have been able to give all of that, and I feel like I won’t be able to process all that I’ve done until I get to take that break.”
Before that break comes an intense run during Broadway’s busiest time, in a show that’s rivaled plays featuring A-listers like George Clooney and Denzel Washington as the hottest ticket in New York.
Kamala Harris, Meghan Markle, and Oprah Winfrey have come to see Gypsy, with Winfrey moved to tears when she visited the cast backstage. Critics have been ecstatic. The climactic sequence where Woods’ character, Louise, stands up to her domineering mother, McDonald’s Mama Rose—leading to McDonald’s barn-burning rendition of “Rose’s Turn”—blows the roof of the Majestic Theater to parts of the stratosphere only seen by the likes of Katy Perry and Gayle King.
All that buzz now comes to roost during Tony season—both for the show and for Woods.
Louise, the meek young girl who blossoms into a burlesque superstar, won a Tony Award for Laura Benanti, who played the role in the previous revival, and earned nominations for three previous actresses who have played the part on Broadway.
It would be the first nomination for Woods, and a course correction after she was considered by many theater fans to be snubbed last season for her work in The Notebook. It also would be historic.
This is the first time in its 66-year existence that Gypsy has been produced with Black women playing Mama Rose, Louise, and June (Jordan Tyson). The production, directed by Kenny Leon, has not altered a word of the script to accommodate the change in the characters’ race. But the story, about a stage mother whose dreams of her daughters becoming famous warp into a maniacal desperation, takes on profound new context with Black actresses playing these women in 1920s America.
“I think this show has a level, a really beautiful level, of the girls who get it and the girls who don’t,” Woods says. “And that’s OK.”
She’s hesitant to call the contextual shifts because of race “subtle;” there’s a memorable scene where the row of young Black boys performing in Mama Rose’s troop is swapped out for white boys. Some audience members notice. Others don’t. But the conversations she’s had with those who do have been especially meaningful.
“Newsflash: I’m Black, and I grew up in a diverse place, but where colorism was still such a thing,” she says of her upbringing just outside of Chicago. “It’s a thing within my family. It’s a thing within anybody’s family. It’s a thing within communities and public and social spaces. And I think it was done in a very tasteful, caring, and cautionary way.”
When whispers spread through the Great White Way that a new revival of Gypsy was seeking a Black actress to play Louise, Woods was in the throes of belting to the rafters in The Notebook each night and paid them no mind. “I remember thinking, oh my God, whoever is gonna be in that is gonna be so good. I did not think I was good enough to be in this production.”
Her team convinced her to submit a self-tape audition. (“I thought it was bad, but they thought it was good.”) She was brought in for four in-person callbacks, the last of which was with McDonald and involved reading out the massive confrontation scene between Mama Rose and Louise.
For any performer, going toe-to-toe with the six-time Tony-winner in a scene that explosive would feel like being a small spewing geyser next to an erupting volcano. But the scene hinges on Louise rising to Mama Rose’s power, even overcoming her. So the shaking nerves that Woods already had were amplified when, in an unexpected move, McDonald stood up during the audition; before she knew it, Woods was fully performing the scene opposite the most talented actor on Broadway.
“I was so scared. I didn’t feel ready,” Woods says. “Then you think, oh, they might actually be wanting me for this, so pull up, and step into your shoes, sister.”
Now that scene, performed after Louise’s transformation into confident burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee during the show-stopper “Let Me Entertain You,” tees off what might currently be the biggest moment on Broadway. McDonald’s rendition of “Rose’s Turn” gets a mid-show standing ovation at every performance.
Woods first saw McDonald’s take on the indelible song during the show’s first runthrough. She was still shaking after acting out Louise’s rage in their confrontation scene. Then she turned and watched McDonald sing.
“I just remember staring and just water pouring out of my face,” she says. “Because, newsflash again, I’m Black and I have a Black mother. It’s different to see someone that looks like someone you know and love asking those questions.”
Woods has her own experience delivering a show’s shattering 11 o’clock number. The wild heights of her belting in the Notebook’s scorching ballad “My Days” announced her as one of musical theater’s next great vocalists. The song is so difficult to sing that people started posting videos on TikTok of themselves attempting to hit the big notes—a vocal challenge akin to sprinting up Mount Everest.
The videos crossed over from niche musical communities on social media to the mainstream in a way that rarely happens; think Wicked, Hamilton, or maybe Dear Evan Hansen as recent isolated examples. In other words, Woods had become a meme.
“Every time I opened my For You page, I was looking at the back of somebody’s throat trying to sing the song, which jump scare!” she says. “But still very sweet.”
Not to be dramatic but this may be my favourite song ever written @Ingrid Michaelson @The Notebook @Joy 🌞 are you real? #thenotebook #thenotebookmusical #VoiceEffects #notebookmusical #fyp #foryoupage #singing #mydays #broadway #musicaltheatre #theatrekid #waapa #performer #livesinging #musical #westend
The more videos she saw, the more personal the trend became. It validated what had been a difficult experience with The Notebook, a show she first started performing workshops for in 2022.
“There was such a stark contrast between how the show was being received online versus ticket sales and critics’ reviews and things like that,” Woods says. “So it was nice to know that people were loving the show the way that we love it, even though they may not be in New York. But they’re there.”
In some ways, it’s fitting that Woods became somewhat of an internet sensation. As a young leading lady, she happens to have one of the Broadway community’s most delightful online presences. She’s scaled back her posting on Instagram on TikTok as her career has taken off, but she remains a hilarious—and blunt—regular on X, posting observations, jokes, and, sometimes, complaints about certain performances and life in general as a busy theater actress.
“I was born in ’99, so I’m a child of the internet. I am a meme creature,” she says. “We’re so used to, excuse my French, s—posting and oversharing and all of that. I’m growing up a little and learning those lessons. My digital footprint is heinous, and I’m just gonna have to deal with it.”
Counterpoint: It’s Woods embodying a 2025 version of what her character Louise sings each night. “Let me entertain you,” indeed.
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