King Princess Claims Her Theater Kid Crown

During her senior year of high school, King Princess, alongside her best friend, staged a “sexually explicit” production of Cabaret. She began as the director but was quickly demoted to musical director after being “way too harsh.”

“I was running that shit like the Navy,” the singer/actor tells me backstage at The Public Theatre in downtown New York. Looking back, she says it was the right call, giving her time to focus on the lead role of Sally Bowles.

Nine years later, the performer, born Mikaela Straus, is returning to her theater kid roots with an Off-Broadway debut as one of the leads in Girl, Interrupted, a new musical based on Susanna Kaysen’s beloved memoir. In it, Straus plays Lisa, the wily ringleader of the women’s ward at a psychiatric hospital, deemed a sociopath by 1960s standards—a role first made iconic by Angelina Jolie in the 1999 film adaptation.

At just 27, King Princess has already captivated audiences with her unapologetically queer pop-rock for nearly a decade, but she’s only recently delved into acting with roles in Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, the 2025 drama Song Sung Blue, and the upcoming rom-com One Night Only. But it wasn’t always part of her plan—in fact, when her favorite psychic predicted her pivot to acting, she was reluctant. Music was always her first love, having spent much of her childhood at her father’s Brooklyn recording studio; theater was a favorite pastime but not a career path.

“My secret love for theater has always bled into what I do,” the performer, sporting a black vest and sunglasses indoors, recalls animatedly from across a conference table. “I love a stage piece. I love set design. I like my show to feel theatrical, and I think that comes from a deep love of stagecraft. Getting to do something like this does fulfill this part of me that I've kept semi-underwraps for a long time.”

While still in high school, Straus was signed to Mark Ronson’s Columbia Records imprint, Zelig Records, and was dubbed, nearly overnight, the face of queer pop thanks to her 2018 viral debut single, “1950.” (She’s since left the major label to go independent, releasing her third studio album Girl Violence under the Brooklyn-based indie section 1.) Acting became her way to feel the joy in performance again.

“With music, everything feels like a rejection and personal. I'm deeply triggered by my own art form,” Straus says. “Acting feels fun. I can put my pussy into something and audition and not get it, and that's okay because I learned something.”

This past February, Straus’ agent suggested she audition for Girl, Interrupted. She was initially hesitant, harboring reservations about playing a character synonymous with Jolie’s Oscar-winning turn, but she was inspired by the script excerpts and went through with it. Ultimately, the audition didn’t go as planned, but her moxie landed her the role.

“I fucked up the song five times—but it was funny. I was like, ‘This fucking song!’ which they liked,” she recalls. “It's rare that I'm like, I'm going to get that. But I was like, I'm going to get that.”

It was a full circle moment for Straus, who first watched the movie in high school. “It’s resonated with young women and non-male people who exist outside of what you are supposed to be, which is quiet, put together, and not too much,” she says. “If you were somebody who was referred to as ‘too much,’ that was the movie for you. I was definitely somebody who was referred to as ‘too much.’”

The Off-Broadway rendition of Girl, Interrupted (music by Aimee Mann; book by Martyna Majok) is equal parts poignant and inquisitive. It also feels more timeless than ever, emphasizing what it means to navigate the world as a young, often misunderstood and underestimated woman.

Straus’ feisty and unpredictable Lisa acts as a foil to her co-star Juliana Canfield’s Susanna, a measured, ambitious yet depressive writer who is unsure why she’s been institutionalized. Straus brings a dynamism to the role, making it clear that a deep pain percolates beneath her erratic exterior.

“The biggest thing for me was separating this person from King Princess,” says the singer-turned-actor. Beyond her “blueprint” of the source memoir, Majok’s book, and Jolie’s “incredibly embodied” performance, Straus learned what she could about Lisa’s psychology by reading portions of Patric Gagne’s Sociopath: A Memoir, at the recommendation of her friend and former costar Murray Bartlett. Nailing Lisa’s grandiose gait was just as essential. “I definitely would get stoned and watch YouTube videos of big cats,” Straus says, pointing to how the character often acts like a predator stalking her prey, or a caged animal growing increasingly agitated. She also watched clips of Captain Jack Sparrow, Alan Cumming on The Traitors, and Austin Powers—Straus’ “holy trinity” of references—to build Lisa’s particular panache.

“Her physicality is certainly existing in the in-between of gender,” she explains, “That character is so flamboyant, but the flamboyancy isn't traditionally female. That’s really fun to play with and really interesting to play with—and something that exists within me too.”

Girl, Interrupted came to King Princess, she says, after she spent her mid-20s unlearning the notion that her best creative output would come from being emotionally wounded. Though there’s immense tragedy in the musical, its resonance lies in its belief in women’s resilience and their multiplicity. It felt like the exact project Straus was looking for: “I've never really been someone who fits in one genre…It makes sense that I like stuff that doesn't fit in a genre, and that I like doing cross-media shit. I always want to reinvent and find new ways to write music and act and sing and dance—and this is that for me. This is a crash course in becoming a better performer overall.”

Before Straus has to dash off to dinner, glam, and curtain call, she shares, with a warmth in her voice, how she’s been struck by the way the coming-of-age show has made her reflect on her own adolescence. “My teenage years existed around here, from the trek from Williamsburg to Manhattan, so I am reliving a part of my youth, but as an adult with perspective,” she says. “It’s been really emotional to have this schedule where I get on the train, I go enjoy my city, and I'm a part of this school of fish that goes from Brooklyn to Manhattan.”

She previously made that commute when she was last immersed in theater—painstakingly attempting to recreate the allure and eroticism of the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret in her own teenage rendition. While she was doing the most at the time, Girl, Interrupted has been a reminder to let go. “This is allowing me to take myself less seriously.”

When the curtain closes on July 12, that’ll be the sentiment that remains. “I get to do something that very few people get to do for work, and I'm very lucky to be doing that. And at the end of the day, it's not that fucking serious,” she says—as if speaking to the 18-year-old director in her.