when you want, where you want.
Erika Henningsen Hates a Book-Length Menu
Illustration: Ryan Inzana
Performing in eight shows a week for Broadway’s Just in Time means Erika Henningsen doesn’t always get a chance to socialize during regular hours. For starters, she says, “I’m not doing dinner on Friday night with my friends.” Her offstage hours now include recording voice-overs for Amazon’s Hazbin Hotel and promoting Tina Fey’s new Netflix show, The Four Seasons. But this week, Henningsen still found time for the important stuff: luxuriously slow meals with her husband at I Sodi, gossip over portobello fries, extra-dirty vodka martinis at Joe Allen, and a semi-regular, deeply passionate fling with string cheese.
Monday, May 12
It’s my day off, which means we can sleep in until nine! Luxury. Well, that is if our tiny puma of a rescue dog — a German-shepherd–cattle-dog mix — doesn’t wake up early. We got her from Muddy Paws Rescue during the pandemic. She was supposed to be a foster, but she was in such high demand on the adoption site that we were like, “We can’t give her up.”
I know I’m supposed to start every day with a glass of water, but I don’t have to sing today, so I make espresso with half-and-half. I don’t know when I was influenced out of nondairy milk. I used to be an oat or almond milk kind of girl, and I just remember going to the grocery store one day and spontaneously buying a little carton of half-and-half. Somewhere along the way, I must have been Inception’d by the food TikTokers and Instagrammers of the world.
My Mondays were so different when I did my first Broadway show. I didn’t think about what I ate. I didn’t worry about how much I was drinking. I just lived life very hard and fast as a 20-something in New York, so my days off would be in recuperation from whatever I had done on Sunday night. Les Miz was a really big cast of a bunch of British people, and British people definitely know how to have a good time. These days, Mondays are a lot more about making sure that there are groceries in the fridge and that my husband, Kyle, and I have had time to actually talk about what’s going on in our lives.
I’m getting bangs today. I spend most of my life in costume, so it feels like a safe time to try something. When I was in Mean Girls, I dyed my hair red; it was … a look. My friends were very kind about it at the time, but when I switched back to my natural color, they were like, “Good call.” Bangs feel safer. My hairstylist always provides a bowl of peanut-butter pretzel nuggets to munch on while I’m in the chair. It’s okay to ask for refills at the hair salon.
It’s great to have Monday nights off, because even at I Sodi, my husband and I are able to walk in and grab seats at the bar. It’s time for cheese, carbs, and spice. I order pancetta-and-pea orecchiette. I Sodi is one of the few places where sometimes, if we know the staff member, we’ll just say, “Whatever you think we should definitely try, please add it.” And it’s always delicious.
The menu isn’t overwhelming. Laminated booklet menus give me hives (I’m talking to you, Cheesecake Factory). They also serve a white negroni that people should write poems about. Our honeymoon was in Italy, and we couldn’t get over how calm the dining experience was — not rushed, not about expedience. I Sodi gives us that feeling. We sit there for two hours.
Tuesday, May 13
Breakfast is eggs, turkey bacon, and avocado on Ezekiel bread; a smoothie with spinach, blueberries, and a scoop of protein powder. I do best with a large protein overload in the morning since I have to eat less as it gets closer to showtime — 1960s corsets and heavy dinners are not a happy match.
I started really tuning in to vocal health during Mean Girls because that show was so intense; it’s probably the hardest thing I’ll ever do unless I play Elphaba one day. (And to quote my best friend, Grey Henson, “You’re not a Glinda. You’re not an Elphaba. You’re a Nessarose.” Which cut me to my core. But he’s correct.) When I was playing Cady, I cut out everything — dairy, spice, anything “bad” — because I thought I had to. But I missed having cheese. I missed pizza. Eventually, I started working it back in and realized it didn’t affect me at all. These days, I love a cheese plate before curtain.
I head home for dinner. I don’t like to eat at the theater because it makes me feel like I live there. Something about eating a meal at my dressing-room table is so sad and dark to me. I eat dinner like a dog with giardia when I’m on a Broadway schedule: sweet potatoes, chicken, rice, and black beans. I’m currently obsessed with the cilantro version of Bitchin’ Sauce and put it on everything.
A few castmates and I head out for a postshow nosh. My castmate Gracie Lawrence and I adore Joe Allen. The martinis are perfectly dirty — I want mine to taste like the ocean — we can always get a table post–curtain call, and they serve actual late-night food food. I get ceviche and French fries, but sometimes a JA’s burger at 9:45 p.m. really does hit the spot. It’s become a little bit of a tradition.
Wednesday, May 14
It’s a two-show day, so I try to start on the right foot. A smoothie with spinach, blueberries, banana, flax, half an avocado, and the protein powder I’m obsessed with. Same old vanilla Nespresso with half-and-half thanks to our trusty De’Longhi. It’s not even our De’Longhi. We wouldn’t know how to pick one of them out because they’re all so fancy. But my husband was in Water for Elephants, and the guy who played the part before him, Grant Gustin, lives in L.A. and got one for his dressing room in New York. When he left the show, he was like, “I can’t take all this back with me.” So we inherited his very nice coffee machine. Thanks, Grant Gustin. That was very nice of you.
I stop by Westerly on the way to the matinee. Westerly feels like a health-food hoarder’s paradise. The aisles are too small, the shelves are too high, and they have far too many varieties of sauerkraut. I love it. I usually end up leaving with something extra that I didn’t know I needed. Today, that’s sliced pineapple and a cup of their to-go lentil soup.
I do our first show of the day and find out that The Four Seasons got picked up for season two during intermission. I’m in the dressing room in my pink corset dress when I get a text from the cast that says, “Happy season-two pickup.” I don’t know what to do with myself, so I buy a $9 matcha. I don’t even drink matcha.
My husband suggests we go to Times Square Diner between shows for the matzo-ball soup, because nothing says “calm your nervous system” like wet bread and salty broth. Times Square Diner is directly between our theaters; it recently underwent a fancy redesign. I feel like Cosmic Diner was a place for my 20s. Times Square Diner is a place for my 30s.
I always go out between shows. I cannot stay in that theater all day. It just feels like the twilight zone to be underground for that long. There are no windows. There are no signs of life. If an apocalypse happened, we would have no idea. The theater is Broadway Severance, and my Innie needs out.
Today is what would have been Bobby Darin’s 91st birthday, so our producers bring cannoli to the theater. I shovel two into my mouth while doing pin curls before the second show.
Thursday, May 15
I do my same morning smoothie. I’m recording voice-overs for the Amazon animated show I star in, Hazbin Hotel. It’s a lot of screaming and yelling, so I rely on pineapple for its anti-swelling properties and beef-jerky bites to stay energized.
I also grab an Rxbar to have mid-session in case I start fading. The role is super–high energy. My character is basically on the verge of having an asthma attack in every single scene. I think animation requires more vocal dexterity than even live theater does. All you have to tell the story is your voice. I would love to do a side-by-side comparison of the vocal waves from my roles on The Four Seasons and Hazbin Hotel. Four Seasons would be pretty steady. Hazbin would look like I was a bunny on cocaine.
I record before Jeremy Jordan, who’s currently playing Floyd Collins. He’s doing a way harder job than I am. Any time I leave the voice booth and he’s coming in, I’m like, “Good luck, babe.”
My Hazbin co-star Tom is in town from L.A. I gave him a list of three Hell’s Kitchen restaurants whose food I know won’t upset my voice or stomach. He chooses Imasa Nori, and we catch up for an hour and a half over delicious yellowtail sashimi and king-crab rolls before I head to the show.
Friday, May 16
I wake up and it feels a bit like, Oh gosh, I’m starting a marathon. I have a two-show day tomorrow and then I am flying to L.A. right after the Sunday matinee. I’m flying out for a quick Netflix FYC event for The Four Seasons. I’ll take the red-eye and another red-eye home the next day to make it back in time for Tuesday night’s show. Am I insane? Maybe.
My husband and I do some batch-cooking today to get ahead of the crazy weekend. We aren’t good cooks, but we are proficient at feeding ourselves. I think we know what works for us. We tend to eat red meat only if we’re out, so protein is usually salmon or chicken rubbed in a homemade dressing of lemon, olive oil, dill, flaky salt, and a little bit of Dijon and black pepper. He handles the meat, and I roast a ton of veggies (sweet potatoes, cauliflower, zucchini, and broccoli) to have with a tahini sauce. I love tahini. I mix two spoonfuls with a bit of lemon, garlic, and olive oil and drizzle it on everything.
I head to the theater and restock our dressing-room fridge with string cheese. Gracie and I are kind of obsessed with it. We’re looking for a mozzarella-cheese-stick sponsorship. It’s the perfect mid-show snack. My relationship with string cheese is an on-again, off-again affair. I forget about it for months at a time — out of sight, out of mind — and then, suddenly, boom: It’s back in my life (fridge).
After the show, I go to Ardesia. It’s such a lovely little wine bar. They stayed open during the pandemic by doing roadside wine service, basically. We would come down from our apartment in Harlem and just drink wine on the sidewalk because we wanted to make sure it stayed open. I always get the portobello fries; I share them with Kyle, Grey, and Grey and I’s Mean Girls co-star Krystina Alabado. Ardesia is a little farther away from the madness of midtown, so it’s perfect for when we want to really be able to just shoot the shit and gossip without anyone overhearing.
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