Every the 8th you've heard of him.
King of England for almost 4 decades.
His primary claim to fame were his six,
count them six contentious marriages.
Now, in today's world,
that would get your reality show.
It's also the topic of the musical 6
the hit musical which is opening tonight
at the Bushnell for 8 performances.
We're happy to have the actress
who plays one of the King's wives.
That's Gabby Carrillo.
Nice to see you, Gabby.
Hi. Welcome aboard.
I always like doing this and
I we've already done well.
Quick what?
City, are you in Hartford?
OK, double checking because you you've been
on the road in the in the show for how long?
Almost exactly a year.
Almost.
It's all a blur,
isn't it?
In a whirlwind. It's fun.
Nice to have you here.
I I love the story. You know,
Henry the eighth man he was,
was he just a womanizer or just a
just a dummy when it came to women?
Um, you know, I I would,
I wish I could go back in time
and and meet him and be able
to kind of psychoanalyze him.
I think there was a lot of.
A lot of complex things going on there.
It was a product of the times
and maybe also who he was.
There also may have been
an head injury in his life.
There's a lot that's curious about his.
You might be on to something
with the head injury.
And the reason I say that,
if you know his history.
Six women, two were he divorced,
Speaking of head injuries,
2 he beheaded one.
One of them died naturally,
and I think she was all the better for it.
There's only one that survived,
Catherine Parr,
and that's your character.
Tell us, take us through the
show because you know in real
life you know six wives getting
together and that that usually
leads to trouble doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. The the show is a a wonderful
experience it it kind of marries pop music,
a pop concert and musical theater.
So it's a great it's a great show for
people to come to who are even a bit
skeptical of musical theater itself
because it's really nothing like
anything that's out there and and it's
a wonderful way to tell the story of.
Of these six women and their experience
and boy would have hit it,
it's been it's still on Broadway.
The show won 23 awards back
in the 2122 Broadway season.
So it's a new show,
including a Tony for Best Original Score,
the Outer Critics Award for Best musical.
When you jump into a show like this,
is there added pressure because
you know, it's a big hit?
Um. And definitely,
I think there there already was a
fan base built around the show,
which was something interesting,
not something that you always get
with with different productions.
There was, there's such a,
they call it the queendom is
the fan base of 6. And so that,
I don't know if it was pressure,
but I felt a desire to really,
to really play this character
truthfully and well and and yeah,
I definitely felt a sense of responsibility
after two years.
You've got a name for the fans.
I would say that that's pretty big.
I mean, that's up there with like
Beyoncé and the beehive and and
all all all the others, right?
So tell us about your character.
What does she go through in the
show without giving away any plots?
OK, without giving away any plot.
Well, we've already given up the ghost.
We've already said you survive.
So there plot twist.
Say that at the beginning. Good.
Catherine Parr, we all know that
if you look in the history books.
But she, yeah, she has a,
a really tragic story sort of about how she
kind of ended up married to Henry the eighth.
She had to sacrifice a lot of her own life
in order to make that marriage happen.
But she was a dutiful person.
She was a woman of faith,
and so she believes that it was her duty
and it was kind of God's plan for her.
To be married to the king.
And and so she had to give up
certain things to make that happen.
And through my character in this
musical and it through her song,
we kind of get to see what her
life might have been like.
If she had married him or,
you know,
what was what she was really about.
And I gotta wonder,
the audience probably rooting for
you because you're going into this
marriage with just a few red flags.
I mean, five previous ones who
are all dead. Good luck.
Six is the the lucky number, right?
Yeah. Yeah, that was.
That's pretty brave of her.
Yeah, absolutely. We just showed.
We showed a quick clip because you've
also been all around the country.
You were in wicked, right?
Uh, I was not in. No, not in.
Maybe the clip was from
something I did in college.
Like, OK because we should play
Elphaba in college. Showed
that a moment ago. So there. Yeah,
I was like, ohh, God, we're showing
that was a college Halloween.
We're showing the wrong person.
No, that's not good.
But you're also in a in a musical
version of love, actually,
the hit Christmas movie,
which you said that you were singing
while they were playing the movie
and with the whole full orchestra.
How cool is that?
Yeah, it's a wonderful production.
We they do quite often in Beverly Hills.
In California. And it's just beautiful.
It's a great Christmas experience,
and this is her first Broadway touring
production 6 opens up tonight at the
Bushnell, runs through the weekend.
You can see Gabriella singing her heart's
content and best of all, surviving.
And nice to see you, Gabriella.
Break a leg tonight here in Hartford.
All right.
Thanks for having Gabriel Carrillo.
Carrillo, thank you very much.