Spencer Sutherland Calls Broadway Debut in & Juliet His 'Favorite Chapter Yet'

Spencer Sutherland is now singing "It's My Life" and "Love Me Like You Do" eight times a week as Romeo in the Broadway hit & Juliet at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. The indie pop singer-songwriter from Pickerington, Ohio calls the role, in his own words, "my favorite chapter yet."

"There's no bigger stage than a Broadway stage, and I've always wanted to do this, ever since I was a little kid," Sutherland told The Broadway Show correspondent Charlie Cooper, speaking on his walk to work at the Sondheim. "I was in theater in high school. It's so different than touring. It's so different than film and TV. There are no other takes. What you do on that stage is what it is. That's really exciting and really nerve-racking and I'm just sweating the entire time."

How did a pop singer end up on Broadway?

The path runs through reality TV and streaming. Sutherland competed on The X Factor, toured the world as a recording artist and racked up millions of streams before landing the part of Romeo — the character he describes as "the original lover boy." It is his Broadway debut, and it slots him into a jukebox musical built on Max Martin's catalogue, where Shakespeare's surviving suitor gets a second act set to chart pop.

The switch from touring to theater has clearly registered with him. No second takes, no retakes, eight performances a week. The live-only format is, in his telling, both the draw and the terror: exciting and nerve-racking at once, sweat included.

What happened on opening night?

For a self-described longtime theater kid, the debut's first curtain brought actual tears. "I did indeed cry," Sutherland admits. "I didn't expect it to be …" — the thought trails off in the interview, which The Broadway Show aired as part of its correspondent segment.

The emotional detail fits the arc. A high school theater student from a Columbus suburb returns to the stage decades into a pop career, this time on Broadway, playing literature's most famous lover in a musical that rewrites his ending. Sutherland frames the whole thing as a chapter — his favorite one so far — which is a tidy verdict from a man sweating through every performance.

Whether Romeo becomes a long-term theatrical home or one chapter among many, Sutherland has already made the jump that eludes most streaming-era pop singers: a named Broadway role, a hit show's marquee, and a commute he plainly enjoys.