Interview: Original Matilda Milly Shapiro on the Very Online New Musical The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse

After winning an honorary Tony Award for being one of the original Matildas at age 11, Milly Shapiro took a break from the stage. Instead, the spunky young actor started focusing on film (“Hereditary”), television, and her own band, AfterxClass.

Now, she’s back in the New Group’s musical The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse, running at the Pershing Square Signature Center, playing an introverted teenager called Brainworm who’s trying to find out what happened to Coco, a woman whose bracelet is seen in a famous 2006 New York Post photo of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton.

TheaterMania recently spoke to Shapiro about her hiatus from theater, the joys of doing this show, the media’s treatment of women, and the pluses and minuses of spending time on the internet.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Why have you been gone from the theater for over a decade?

[Last Bimbo] was just the right project at the right time. I actually started working on the show last June. I always knew I would come back to theater. I never planned to leave, and I was still auditioning all the time. As an actor, performing live and experiencing the same story every night in a different way is so exciting. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until we started performances.

What made you want to do this show? Was it the character, the music, the themes?

All of it. I think one of the most important things about this piece is that it shows how all the women involved take back their power. Women having control of their own destiny is such an important theme to me: That goes back to Matilda. Of course, no one in this show has psychic powers.

Do you think the media is—or has been—fair to women?

The cultural impact of how the media treated women like Britney and Paris back in 2006, when I was only 4, shocked me a little. It must have been so alienating for them. If that had happened to me, I would be less well-adjusted than they are. I think it speaks to who they are as people that they are still here. I find that so empowering. Still, I feel that even though the media still doesn’t always treat women very well, it’s less bad now than it was then.

The music sounded difficult to sing. Is it?

I don’t think so. I love the music and find the score very fun to sing. A lot of the music is similar to what I personally listen to; in fact, one of the songs is a direct allusion to boygenius, which is a group that I love.

Has the score changed a lot since you began working on the show?

Yes! During this process, I have seen so many versions of these songs; the writers were still changing lyrics during previews. Of course, that was stressful, but it also made the show stronger. We all paid attention to the audience to see how these changes affected the show, and we often felt more the show was making sense. That’s what really mattered.

The show’s biggest themes concern social media—both its pluses and minuses. Can you relate to these aspects of the show?

Definitely. I was an influencer when I was 17 or so. During Covid, I turned to the internet just to stay connected. You find out quickly that not everyone likes you on the internet. I suffered lots of internet bullying, just like Brainworm does. It’s hard not to read the comments on your posts. The internet gives people free rein to say crazy things that can be harmful and hurtful. You are opening yourself up to both scrutiny and criticism. But in the end, you have to remember that even though everyone has an opinion, the only ones you should pay attention to are yours and the people you admire. It took lots of therapy for me to understand. I talked a lot to the show’s creators—Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley—about this.

But you still believe the internet can be a good thing, right?

Yes, I think it can be a safe space where you can find pockets for likeminded people, especially in the LGBTQ+ community, which can be especially hard if you are growing up in unsupportive place. It’s much easier to find information than, let’s say, at the library. You can’t see everything in real life, but you can see everything on the internet. One of the things I find most fascinating about our show is that it allows some people to see things in their life represented in art, and that can make them feel less alone.