A First Look At All Nighter, Starring Kristine Froseth & Havana Rose Liu

It’s a freezing morning in Astoria, Queens, and the cast of the new off-Broadway play All Nighter is giddy to be in the same room. “We’ve been line-reading over FaceTime, but this is the first time we’ve all been together,” Kathryn Gallagher says from her makeup chair. “A never-before-seen group,” Alyah Chanelle Scott chimes in from two seats down. It’s early, but the joy is palpable. Everyone on set has been waiting for this day.

We’re at a photo studio to shoot promotional images for the show, opening in previews Feb. 25. While the plot remains a bit of a mystery — five college seniors pulling their last all-nighter of finals week, with secrets revealed and tensions mounting as the hours pass — the cast is stacked with young Hollywood’s brightest. Between them, they’ve been on Broadway, starred in beloved TV shows like The Sex Lives of College Girls and The Buccaneers, and appeared in critically acclaimed films like Bottoms.

These five women — Gallagher, Scott, Kristine Froseth, Havana Rose Liu, and Julia Lester — have orbited each other for years, but spending time with them, you’d guess they were a real group of longtime pals. “I needed a healing, girl-centered environment, and this experience has been that for me so far,” Liu says. Here, the cast dishes on the power of female friendships and what audiences can expect from the play’s 12-week run — namely, a “very freaking fun” time.

What can people expect when they come to this show? I’m so intrigued by the plot synopsis.

Kathryn Gallagher: I’ve been a legitimate fan of this play for six years. My best friend [Natalie Margolin] wrote it, and from the first reading in her apartment, this was exactly the kind of theater I wanted to see, which was all about the complex dynamics of a young woman about to embark on the real world.

Havana Rose Liu: We see a lot of stuff about girls going from high school to college, but the period of time at the end of college is pretty terrifying. It's right when the wheels start to fall off the bus in terms of your individuation and figuring out the rest of your life. Truth can be a fickle concept, and this play does an interesting job of introducing that idea — the truth you tell yourself versus what’s actually true, and how everyone's truth is a bit different. It’s also my first play!

KG: My first play, too.

Julia Lester: Same. Well, I did a play in high school, but does that count? No.

HRL: But you guys have been on Broadway.

KG: Yeah, in musicals, but those are different.

HRL: OK, I was like, “Y’all are liars!” Our truths are not the same. This is my first time on stage. I wanted a safe place to try it, and this feels like a safe place.

Kristine Froseth: It’s my first time on stage, too. I was drawn to the female friendships and the nuances of how the characters are being honest and dishonest with each other. It's interesting to check in on the narratives they create for themselves.

Alyah Chanelle Scott: Also, it's a fun show. It's 90 minutes with no intermission. It's a high-speed f*cking roller coaster, and then it crashes and burns. My boyfriend came to the reading — I didn't tell him anything in advance — and he was like, "That's the most fun I've ever had watching people sit at a table and talk."

KG: It’s as if you're on a train and you're sitting next to a group of friends and eavesdropping. That’s what the play feels like to me.

Between the five of you, you’ve been in so many different projects about high school and college girls. What do you pull from in your own lives to channel those experiences?

KG: Anyone who's been a 21- or 22-year-old girl has experienced the absolute mania of trying to figure out who you are. You can't escape trying on a million different versions of yourself before you land somewhere in the middle. I feel like I knew who I was as a kid, and the furthest away I ever felt from myself was at age 21, and now I'm making a return.

HRL: I feel that way, too.

ACS: That’s my dream.

KG: I’m older than you, so you're on your way.

ACS: You're not that much older. How old are you?

KG: 31.

ACS: I’m 27.

KG: A lot happens in those years. You’re entering your Saturn return.

ACS: I'm craving it.

KG: Oh God, it's hell. But the biggest thing I've pulled from is growing up, and that real moment of thinking, "I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, so I'm going to try it all on really fast."

JL: The show takes place in 2014, and at that time, I was searching for a group like this. It was my freshman year of high school, and I was navigating a new school with all these kids who already knew each other. I bounced around between different groups until I found my people, and it was five girls who carried me through the rest of my high school experience. It's really cool to have a full-circle moment of being in a group like the one I was trying to find in my high-school years.

It’s as if you're on a train and you're sitting next to a group of friends and eavesdropping. That’s what the play feels like to me.

HRL: I went to a small liberal arts college for the first year and a half of college in upstate New York. It was right around 2016, pre-Trump election. It was an interesting time, culturally, to be a girl — there was a complicated mix of empowerment and disempowerment, and individuating from not only the way you grew up perceiving yourself, but from the way society perceived you. It was a very interesting “girl boss” time for feminism in general. Being in a bubble of a small college, within a small female friend group like the characters in this show, is like a magnifying glass of that feeling.

ACS: When I was growing up, I watched TV and always loved seeing these little white girls bouncing around, being rich and pretty. I thought, "I want to be rich and pretty, too. That's the vibe I want to give.”

You manifested.

ACS: This is a self-fulfilling prophecy of me wanting to be Hannah Montana in real life. But in a real way, I love that I'm playing Tessa, who is someone a different character aspires to be. It's typically the reverse — I'm used to playing this self-conscious person who aspires to be the other girl, so this is a fun world to be in.

HRL: What a personal arc.

ACS: I really did manifest this. Sorry, that’s the most vain answer. I’m on Disney Channel in my head. Who isn't?

JL: Not me, that was real life [on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series]. But we've graduated. I'm in college now.

You all have such a great connection IRL. What’s it going to be like to bring that to the stage?

ACS: There’s something magical about there not being a barrier between an audience and what you see on stage. When you do things on a TV set, you're really just a cog in a machine that's someone else's medium. With this, there's no one between us and them. It's scary, but at the same time it's so f*cking fun.

KF: I'm scared.

HRL: Me too. Don't throw tomatoes at us.

JL: The tone of this play allows us to have the freedom to stumble over our feet and play off of each other. I feel like if it gets too rigid, it's going to lose the fun, so I'm giving myself a lot of grace to just be.

HRL: By giving yourself that grace, you're giving it to me, too.

ACS: Even if the worst thing happens, it’s going to be fine. You're not alone. We could say anything, and we would still find our way back to where we're supposed to be.

KG: In the words of Hannah Montana, "You'll always find your way back home."

All Nighter begins previews Feb. 25 at the Newman Mills Theater, with opening night on March 9. It runs through May 18, and tickets are available for all dates.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.