Some people have jobs so cool we'd actually enjoy attending their marathon Zoom meetings. Even the ones that could totally have been an email.
Not to say we don't cherish our all-important responsibility of bringing you every last piece of need-to-know information about the casts of Bridgerton and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but we don't have our own glam squad or a Rolodex filled with famous names, now do we?
But the impossibly cool people we'll be profiling in E! News' latest series totally do. Plus access to things like private drivers, designer garb and the type of professional titles we'd drop with wild abandon at parties, dinner dates or while chatting with the barista at Starbucks. Welcome to A Day in the Life...
Having kicked off her full-time stint as Wicked's first Black Glinda Feb. 14, Brittney Johnson certainly knows about popular. Though the former understudy tries to spend a little time each day scanning through the many well-wishes she's received since her debut, "There are so many!" she marvels to E! News.
OG Glinda Kristin Chenoweth shipped over an opening night present, theater doyenne Audra McDonald ("She is the reason I believed there was a place for me on Broadway," Brittney gushed on Instagram) sent flowers and Ariana Grande—set to tackle the good witch role in Jon M. Chu's upcoming movie adaptation—turned out for a Feb. 19 performance.
"It was so special," says Brittney of the visit. "And she was so excited. She was like, 'Can I hug you? Is that going to be okay?'"
But it's the countless tweets and DMs from fans that have the 32-year-old triple threat riding high. "It makes me feel like I'm having an impact," she raves. "It makes me feel like it's not just about me. Because I know that it's not just about me and it's exciting to hear other people's stories."
Though getting to share her journey—she began campaigning to get an audition for the three-time Tony winner shortly after her 2012 graduation from New York University—has been pretty great, too. Even if that means waking up before the sun.
Brittney, a vet of productions like Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Sunset Boulevard and Motown the Musical, walks E! News through a recent day that left her floating.
5:30 a.m. (EST) With an exceptionally early call time, Brittney's alarm goes off some four-and-a-half hours after she got to sleep the night before. "Usually in the mornings, I wake up, I meditate, I pray, I journal a little bit, I go to the gym," she describes.
But at this pre-dawn hour it's all she can do to sip her cup of English Breakfast ("Unless I cannot stand upright, I do not drink coffee," she explains, citing a previous java dependence she had to kick), sit down with cats Elliott and Chloe "and just try to breathe and wake up before my glam team arrives."
6 a.m. "If I can help it, I like to give the sun its time to make the day before I join," Brittney cracks. But she had a good reason to rise and shine nearly four hours earlier than usual: Her second appearance on the Today show since Broadway made its post-COVID return last September. "It was an exciting day," she notes, "so it was okay."
Still, with more than a half hour until daylight will stream into her apartment, she has to bust out her ring light to help her squad get to work.
8 a.m. Admittedly, the actress can't help but feel a little extra, uh, bubbly when her town car pulls up outside of Today's studios. "Rockefeller Center is such an iconic kind of space that, just walking by, I always feel like I'm on 30 Rock or something," she admits. "It feels very New York."
And while she enjoyed performing with the Wicked cast out on the plaza last fall, this "was a completely different experience," she explains. "This time I got to kind of talk about me and my journey a little bit as Brittney, which was nice." Plus, she received a special shoutout from predecessor Kristin. "There's so much support and love from anyone who's ever played this role, anyone who's ever been in the show, people who love the show all over the world," Brittney gushes, explaining her teary reaction to Kristin's message. "I feel it and I'm just so grateful."
10 a.m. Having "devoured" the just-in-case protein bar she grabbed on her way out the door, Brittney does another interview, then jumps back in the car to head home for a well-earned cat nap. (A literal one, with Elliott deciding to join her on the couch.)
"I fell down hard," she admits. "I hadn't planned to sleep for that long, but I think somewhere in there I pushed snooze and I was unconscious when I did it, so I slept past my alarm."
3 p.m. A trip to the gym helps shake off any grogginess. "I use that app called Sweat," Brittney notes of her six-day-a-week routine that sees her alternate between an inclined walk on the treadmill ("Still not fun, but it's nicer on your knees than running is and it has the same effect") and weight lifting.
A couple months in, "I've really been loving it," she says. "I like going to the gym with a plan because if I don't, I feel like I just kind of flounder in there and I don't get as much done as I want and then I end up having to run a whole lot and I don't like to run."
Endorphins soaring, she discovers her boyfriend has whipped up one of their Green Chef meal kits. "I just kind of showed up," she says, "and I was like, 'Oh, there's food here. Okay, let's eat.'"
6 p.m. What was that about defying gravity? Brittney's 10- to 15-minute bike ride to Gershwin Theatre in midtown Manhattan is "kind of uphill the whole way," she notes, "so I get a nice little warmup on the way to the theater. Sometimes I sing!"
After parking her bike, she makes the rounds before settling in to put on her makeup. "Once I get to my dressing room, I don't get to see anybody," she shares. "So I usually pop into the ensemble dressing room and say hi and give everybody hugs." Then it's time for her hair supervisor to prep her strands for Glinda's blonde curly wig and the crowning achievement.
"I've dyed my hair before, so I've been blonde-ish," Brittney explains. "But in life I have never worn a crown as part of my normal wardrobe. So, for me, once that crown goes on, there's just something surreal and magical about it. It transports you."
7 p.m. From her perch waiting in the rafters, "I have to, have to say the little monologue that I say at the end of the show," she explains of her pre-show ritual. "It reminds me that our show starts at the end. And that I tell the story to bring us back to the beginning. So I always say that to kind of prep my psyche for, like, you've already been through the show."
Her other favorite habit: Peeking over the curtain. "You can see a couple of the seats when you're up there," she confesses. "And so I like to look at the people and it reminds me of why I do it when I see how excited people are. As soon as the lights go down, you see everybody shove their phones away and they're gripping their playbills and some people start clapping. And it pumps me up and it grounds me and it humbles me that they're here to see us tell this story. And I have a responsibility to tell it honestly and truthfully for them."
10 p.m. Who can say if she's been changed for the better? Uh, Brittney can. Ahead of curtain call, she and Lindsay Pearce, the Elphaba to her Glinda, grip hands backstage.
"We're talking through how we are, having just experienced that three hours of an emotional rollercoaster," Brittney describes. "And then we're like, 'Okay. Are you ready? I'm ready! You ready?' And then the doors open and we just rush out." Though they're the ones receiving the standing ovations, "We're grateful for people being there. And we're grateful for people holding space for us. They were a part of it with us. And so it's like a shared gratitude that we all rush down there and we get to bow with our cast. It's really beautiful."
11:30 p.m. Though she's figuratively floating on air ("The whole day was special," she notes), this is not a night of excess celebration for Brittney. After taking a makeup wipe to her face and biking home (she sails downhill this time, making for "a nice cooldown"), she diligently washes her face, showers and "is out" well before midnight.
As for her dreams, they're pretty sweet. She's wrapping up work on a pilot she's been writing these past few years and is eager to begin pitching it—among other things. "I'm excited to see what's next," she says. "I'm hoping that I have the opportunity to do some television, maybe some movies, maybe another Broadway show. Who knows? The sky is the limit, right?"
At this point, nobody in all of Oz, no wizard that there is or was, is ever gonna bring her down.