On Broadway, Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne are bringing chaotic, martini-fueled honesty to a Noël Coward comedy that’s survived nearly a century of debate—once even nearly blocked for being “too” farcical.
When Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne step into Fallen Angels, the evening doesn’t ease you in. It barrels forward—martinis, Champagne, confessionals that slip into jealousy and competition—until two friends are forced to confront what happens when the past walks back into the room.
The play is a deep-cut from Noël Coward’s catalog, and it’s nearly 100 years old. In it. O’Hara and Byrne play friends who discover that a lover they shared before they got married is returning to town. The setup is tangled from the start: the women anxiously await his arrival. and then the night devolves into a frenzy of feelings they can’t quite control.
O’Hara, 50, says the comedy was never meant to be polite. She also points to why it once struggled to exist at all.
“The play was incredibly ahead of its time and was banned and almost not allowed to be on until it was just decided that it was so farcical and would never happen in real life — as if women would ever have such desires,” O’Hara says.
She frames the production’s current energy as a kind of corrective instinct—not only to the story. but to how women are allowed to want what they want. “We tried to just have a little bit more agency in the storytelling. and also really make it about our friendship and lean a little against the rivalry by making it a shared passion — even though we. of course. get drunk and get mad at each other.”.
Working with Byrne has been part of that charge. O’Hara calls her co-star “a comedian through and through. ” saying Byrne came in with “the bold choices.” She describes how the characters sit on opposite ends of the spectrum—“One is the alpha; one is the wild card. One has to be holding down the fort. one has to be going off the rails. and then they switch places.” Rather than try to smooth out the differences. O’Hara says they leaned into them.
The partnership also hits something personal for O’Hara. “Some of the most important relationships in my life are my female friendships. ” she says. pointing to the fact that she’s built a long creative life alongside other women too. She’s currently also doing a show she’s built with Sutton Foster. and says they’ve “walked alongside each other in this business for 25 years.”.
“We’re in two completely different lanes — we’ve never been competitors — but at the same time. we’ve made each other better. ” O’Hara says. She and Byrne, she adds, started with a similar mindset: “We’re going to be better together. You’re going to do your thing. I’m going to do mine. We’re nothing alike.” And yet, she insists, “together we’re more powerful.”.
The role itself is doing something else for her, too. O’Hara talks about deliberately moving away from the kind of work she’s just finished—choosing what comes next as a way to keep her range alive. “Even from the beginning. I’ve always said. ‘I want to do exactly the opposite of what I’ve just done. ’ because I feel like I’m trying to grow and learn. ” she says.
That meant switching genres on purpose: “So if I did a very. very dramatic part. I wanted to then do a musical comedy and then do a Shakespeare play and then come back and do another musical comedy.” She notes that the last Broadway show she did before this was Days of Wine and Roses. calling it “a terribly sad story.”.
“To come and now do this comedy right after is so refreshing, especially at this age,” she says.
She’s thinking about what audiences expect from women over 50—and what she wants to play instead. “A lot of the roles. especially in television. I’m playing some pretty angry or sad or heartbroken woman. ” she says. “And what a fun thing to get to play, at my age — this sexual, passionate, hungry, funny, alive person.”.
The point isn’t just that she’s enjoying the character. She wants the industry to stop treating energy as something that runs out. “I’m going to be looking for the people who want to create those energetic, full-of-life characters even after 50. Let us be bold. Let us not decide that life ends.”
Before curtain, she’s just as intentional. She credits an eight-shows-a-week schedule with both calm and control. even if it’s difficult for her family and her life. “It’s hard for my family and for my life. but there’s also something very secure about it. ” she says. She describes the rhythm as keeping her body and habits steady: “I eat better. I drink a lot more water. I take better care of myself because I must.”.
In the dressing room. her routine starts with stretching—“a lot of yoga stretching”—and then inversions. which she says “gets all the chemicals rushed to the right places.” She talks about breathing slowly and trying not to arrive at the start of the show already “ratcheted up. ” calling it “almost like you can free-fall into the show.” She won’t call the production a storm. “I think of it more as a celebration,” she says. Still, she describes it as “almost like the calm before the party.”.
Outside the theater, she’s learned the shape of perception can be messy too. O’Hara recalls a stage-door exchange after This World of Tomorrow. A man told her he’d come because he “didn’t know you were an actress. ” saying he’d “seen you for years and years and years but I didn’t know you were an actress.”.
“It just confirms the fact that you can really never worry too much about how you’re perceived. People are going to feel how they feel,” she says. She also hears people question why she didn’t sing—an assumption that, for her, misses the point. “I’ll think to myself, ‘Well, you knew this was a play, right?. You knew that I wasn’t going to sing.’”.
The same resistance to outside pressure shows up in how she thinks about screen time and what influences her away from her own judgment. She says she’s “acutely aware right now of allowing myself to be overly influenced” and points to social media’s pull: “it’s almost like we’re forgetting how to make our own decisions.”.
She describes falling into that pattern—sometimes even at her age, as she says she’s seen people rush toward new supplements. “I’ve definitely jumped on the bandwagon,” she says, naming creatine and protein and “whatever.” But she emphasizes what brought her back: “I know what’s best for me.”
“When I get back to myself and to trusting who I am, I get back on a great path,” she says.
That careful approach extends to moderation in her routines. She says what works best for her is “having enough protein but not pounding protein.” She doesn’t eat a lot of beef. explaining that it doesn’t agree with her. so her protein sources are different. She also highlights “lots of vegetables and fruit,” along with hydration, whether it’s “water or coconut water.”.
She lifts “a little bit of weights. but not heavy weights.” “I never have. and light weights have always worked better for me.” And she sums it up with a simple reminder: “Make sure you’re still making the final decision. Don’t start to put something else in the first position, in the lead position. At the end of the day, you approve the final cut of any choice you make.”.
In Fallen Angels, the drama comes in under the door like a confession you can’t take back. The play may be nearly a century old. but O’Hara’s insistence on agency—on women wanting what they want. and on adults choosing what’s right for themselves—lands like something newly spoken. Tonight’s comedy might be built for martinis and laughter. but it’s also built for the moments afterward. when the past returns and the room has to decide what to do with it.
Kelli O’Hara Rose Byrne Fallen Angels Noël Coward Broadway Tony Award-nominated martini Champagne female friendship Days of Wine and Roses