why the new Broadway musical Death Becomes Her was ripe for TikTok memes

A few snippets of musicalised dialogue from the cast album of the new Broadway musical Death Becomes Her – with music and lyrics by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, and a book by Marco Pennette – have recently become trending sonic memes on TikTok.

In all sorts of situations, users are lip synching to audio clips of Broadway star Jennifer Simard, in the character of Helen Sharp (played by Goldie Hawn in the 1992 cult film on which the musical is based), saying things like “That was rude. That was pretty fuckin’ rude” and “She stole my life. She made me cuckoo. She’s why I spent four years locked in that health spa.”

Musical theatre fans love a good meme (scholar Trevor Boffone has written a whole book about the phenomenon) and Death Becomes Her is primed to create a lot of them: a show featuring two divas (played by Simard and Megan Hilty as Madeleine Ashton, Meryl Streep’s role in the movie) based on a cult film about divas begs to be shaped and reshaped by fan culture.

Helen and Madeleine are longtime rivals who both take a magic potion that makes them immortal. This leads them to find increasingly extravagant ways to try and do away with each other, with the help of Helen’s put-upon husband Ernest (Christopher Sieber), a plastic surgeon who reluctantly falls into the role of restoring their bodies after each “accident”.

Some of Hilty’s clips have also been TikTok-ified (notably Tell Me, Earnest) but Simard is winning the numbers game. Her “That was rude” clip alone has 321,000 videos and counting.

Finding the patter

There seem to be two main reasons for the attraction of these clips. First is Simard’s delivery of the words. Simard is a longstanding Broadway star and an expert at musical comedy timing.

Second is the rhythmic quality of the dialogue. Not fully sung, these bits are spoken in mostly strict rhythm over orchestral accompaniment. That they have become such earworms demonstrates it is not only melody that burrows into the brain, but also rhythmic contour.

There is a long history of this style of speak-singing in musical theatre, notably popularised in the late 1950s by Robert Preston in The Music Man and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.

Neither of those actors was a strong singer, but both had excellent timing and were able to deliver spoken lines above music with a strong sense of musicality.

Simard is an excellent singer with a very wide range, but the comic role of Helen – ever the underdog to her rival famous actress Madeleine – lends itself to this style of heightened speech.

Most effective rhythmically, and the most popular excerpt, is the “That was rude” meme, where Simard begins slowly without accompaniment; the bass comes in on “rude” and sets a groove for the rest of the short excerpt.

This one has been used in every possible situation, from responses to nasty notes left on people’s cars to complaints about incorrect drink orders. Some of the TikTokers refer to Simard in on-screen text, but this one seems to have become popular outside any specific reference to the show, in a truly viral moment.

Ripe for the lip-sync

The lengthiest of the trending excerpts is the one that begins with “We talked about killing her before”, which sets off a monologue about Helen’s plan to do away with Madeline once and for all.

This is a tour de force for Simard’s comic timing, as it begins in free rhythm and then gradually takes on a more consistent beat. TikTokers are tending to use this one primarily as a demonstration of their lip-syncing skills, as opposed to the other shorter clips that are applied in different ironic situations.

This trend also shows the continuing importance of the cast album in musical theatre culture. The majority of TikTokers probably have not seen the show, currently only playing on Broadway with high ticket prices. Yet the cast album (easily available on all the main streaming sites) gives access.

The fact these clips come from a cast album also more easily allows fans to create their own visuals around it. Unless they actually saw the show they only have production photographs and short publicity clips (and the occasional shaky bootleg or slime tutorial) to go on in terms of what it looks like.

Audio from a source like the soundtrack of the Wicked movie has not led to so many lip-sync videos because the visual track is so readily accessible; as a film, Wicked’s visuals define its audio while a cast album can more easily work the other way round.

Beyond Broadway

I saw Death Becomes Her on Broadway in January and enjoyed it. It’s a fun show full of special effects and comic bits. The score is serviceable (it’s not Sondheim), but it is catchy – very important for its use in these TikTok trends – and well performed by Simard and the rest of the cast.

This whole phenomenon demonstrates that the current cultural sphere of “Broadway” extends well beyond the street itself. This has been the case at least since the rise of the cast album in the 1950s (My Fair Lady’s was the best-selling LP of 1956), but now the reach is intensified by social media spaces like TikTok; you don’t have to have actually seen Death Becomes Her to experience it.