\n<\/p>\n
When Jasmine Amy Rogers learned that she had been nominated for a Chita Rivera Award, for outstanding dancer in a Broadway show, her first reaction was to laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because I felt a little bit like an impostor,\u201d said Rogers, who plays the Jazz Age cartoon character Betty Boop<\/a> in \u201cBoop! The Musical<\/a>.\u201d \u201cThe dancing is always something that I was so fearful of.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the tap portion of the audition process had been, by her own admission, \u201creally bad.\u201d \u201cI was so nervous that I just shut down,\u201d Rogers recalled, just hours after the nomination was announced. \u201cIt was very embarrassing for me. I did a little bit of the tap number from the beginning and I just couldn\u2019t pick up the pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n It sounded \u201clike somebody dropped a handful of silverware in the kitchen,\u201d according to Jerry Mitchell, the musical\u2019s choreographer and director. But, he added in a phone interview, \u201cshe went away, she worked on it, she came back and she was better.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In between sips from a chai latte at Manhattan\u2019s Chelsea Market, Rogers, 26, could not quite seem to shake a sense of awe at the turns her career has taken in such a short time. The young actress, who had earlier indulged in some shopping (including a collage that featured a boxer that reminded her of her dog), often laughed in slight disbelief, and admitted to feeling a little out of step over the years: sometimes literally, in reference to her dancing, but also more generally, like when she was a finalist at the 2017 Jimmy Awards<\/a>, which honor outstanding high school musical-theater performers in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like a fish out of water a little bit because I was like, these kids know more than I do about musical theater and they\u2019re so talented,\u201d said Rogers, who represented her high school in the Houston area, where her family had moved in 2010. \u201cFor a long time, and even still now, I have this impostor syndrome kind of thing where I\u2019m like, \u2018Do I belong here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Rogers grew up in Massachusetts, the kind of kid who would put on a purple wig her grandmother had given her and \u201csing to myself these sad songs, like \u2018Reflection\u2019 from \u2018Mulan,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She appeared in her first musical when she was 7, playing a member of Tiger Lily\u2019s crew in a production of \u201cPeter Pan\u201d (\u201cWe were actually like a tribe of hippie Native Americans, which was nice\u201d) in Milford. From her spot in the ensemble, she somehow managed to sing over Tiger Lily. \u201cI just wanted to be as loud as possible, just singing and dancing my little heart out,\u201d Rogers said, laughing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After high school, she moved again, this time to New York, where she attended the Manhattan School of Music. She dropped out after two years, having reached what she called \u201ca stagnant point.\u201d It wasn\u2019t long before Mitchell cast her as the best friend of the main character in \u201cBecoming Nancy,\u201d<\/a> a new musical he was choreographing and directing at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta in 2019.<\/p>\n Old habits resurfaced during that run, she said. \u201cThere were a lot of moments where I was pushing myself a little too hard and the older cast members were like, \u2018You don\u2019t need to do this, you don\u2019t need to prove anything \u2014 you already have the role.\u2019\u201d Yet while Rogers could occasionally give in to her insecurities, she had a clear need to get out there and make herself heard.<\/p>\n The next big gig after \u201cBecoming Nancy,\u201d was the \u201cMean Girls\u201d tour, where she played Gretchen Wieners. Then Mitchell came calling again, in 2023, for the Chicago production of \u201cBoop!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI knew from having worked with her in Atlanta that she is a money player,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom my experience with people like Norbert Leo Butz and Marissa Jaret Winokur, Laura Bell Bundy, Annaleigh Ashford<\/a> \u2014 all the people I consider stars that I\u2019ve had the opportunity to work with at a very young age \u2014 she\u2019s one of those people who never steps onstage without being absolutely certain of every move she\u2019s going to make.\u201d<\/p>\n