3 hours ago
1
Unity Phelan’s acting resume has range, to say the least.
In the last six years, she’s appeared in a brutal and bloody blockbuster action film, a mind-bending auteurist drama and a fizzy TV comedy series.
But the projects have one thing in common: In all of them, she wears ballet shoes.
Phelan, a principal with the New York City Ballet, has become Hollywood’s ballerina.
She was an assassin-in-training in “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” starring Keanu Reeves, a dancing dream in a hallway in Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” and now a sidelined star in “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino’s “Étoile” on Prime Video.
“This is all a cherry on top,” Phelan, 30, told The Post after a New York City Ballet rehearsal. “It’s the best whipped cream topping to a career I could imagine.”
And she’s had quite a career. Critics have called the five-foot-eight dancer “incandescent.”
Born in Princeton, NJ, Phelan studied at the Princeton Ballet School from a young age, while also nurturing a passion for musical theater.
“I loved Broadway, and I grew up singing,” she said. “My whole family — everybody sings. My dad’s in a choir, my sister’s in a choir, my parents met singing.”
So, while learning how to pirouette, Phelan also refined her belting and jazz squares.
“I went to a camp called Ghostlight Theater Camp [in Maine] religiously as long as I could until I got into New York City Ballet,” she added.
Those acting chops she picked up years ago have finally come in handy in “Étoile,” an eight-episode series about the creative and romantic hijinks at two ballet companies: The Metropolitan Ballet Theater (a stand-in for the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center) and Le Ballet National in Paris.
Phelan plays Julie, a star dancer who’s replaced after she topples over while foolishly filming a TikTok video in high-heel Louboutins.
“It’s the first time I’ve spoken on camera and actually acted and worked on scenes,” she said. “The other ones I danced in I was primarily silent and did some acting with my face, but not with my voice. And so this was a tester for me.”
Off-camera, Phelan got useful tips from Tony Award-nominated Broadway star and “Maestro” actor Gideon Glick, who plays eccentric choreographer Tobias Bell.
“Gideon has become a close friend of mine,” she said. “We had a couple scenes together. We got to hang out a lot. He’s amazing and so much fun and was so giving.”
The more-experienced actors had to pick up some new tricks, too. The non-dancers, like Glick, 36, and French actress Lou de Laâge, as world-renowned ballerina Cheyenne Toussaint, had their own beginner ballet classes, Phelan said.
They worked hard to create an unusual dance story. Often backstage ballet dramas, such as the psychological horror movie “Black Swan,” are pitch dark and filled with vicious personal vendettas and body dysmorphia. Sherman-Palladino told Phelan “Étoile” would be different.
“Amy, from the beginning, she was, like, ‘I’m so excited you’re gonna be here,’” she recalled. “‘We’re not gonna do anorexia. We’re not gonna do dancers stab each other in the back. We’re not going to do the lipstick on the mirror in the dressing room. We’re going to be as true to form as it can be while still making it dramatic.’”
Phelan added that, while heightened, “Étoile” really does look a lot like what actually goes on backstage at the David H. Koch Theater.
“Obviously it’s dramatized,” she said. “But there’s moments of it where I’m like, ‘Yep, that happens and that’s very real and that is a lot like what our day is.'”
Phelan, a cheerful workaholic, kept a packed schedule during the three-month filming process. She danced at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and the Vail Dance Festival in Colorado, as well as in Saratoga, Mexico and Copenhagen.
But the “Étoile” experience was a special one.
“It’s still crazy to me that I got to be a part of this as an actor,” Phelan said. “It’s really cool.”
English (US)