“Queen of Versailles” Jackie Siegel has shared her kids’ hilarious response to seeing the new musical based on their mom’s life.
The Queen of Versailles — which shares a name with the 2012 documentary that followed Siegel’s life as she and her late husband, Westgate timeshare magnate David Siegel, set out to build a 90,000 square-foot mansion in Florida — opened November 9 at New York City’s St James Theatre. Siegel, 59, was in attendance, along with her children.
Speaking to The Independent the morning after, Siegel says that having Tony and Emmy winner (and the original Glinda in Wicked) Kristin Chenoweth portray her on Broadway is “more than a dream come true.”
“I feel like I died and went to heaven,” she said. “In fact, when my kids saw her on Broadway last night they said, ‘Mom, she plays the Queen of Versailles better than you.’ They said, ‘I thought that was you on stage, Mom.’ She did that good.”
Siegel continued, applauding Chenoweth: “I mean, she’s really got it. She is a true professional, my God. She must be a machine or something because she is just — I don’t know how she has time to even sleep because I can’t imagine all of the intense rehearsals and some of these are two performances in a day.”
Siegel herself auditioned for Broadway shows, including Cats and The Will Rogers Follies in the early 1990s, though she says she wasn’t auditioning to become a star.
“I just wanted to be like maybe one of the girls in the background, or walk down the stairs in my tap shoes,” she explained. “I wasn’t even aiming that high. And I never made it. The people finally told me to just give up.”
As it would turn out, Siegel became a well-known personality in her own right through her family’s 2012 documentary (The Queen of Versailles), 2022 reality TV series (Queen of Versailles Reigns Again), and now the recently opened Broadway musical.
“I don’t even know if the people from 30 years ago are still alive, ‘cause they were old back then, some of these mentors that told me to give up. But now the Queen of Versailles, my name, is in the marquees on Broadway,” she boasted. “I think the people that told me to give up are kind of probably rolling over in their graves right now.”
Siegel seems pleased with the musical overall, though she emphasizes that it is “inspired by my story” and says that “some things had to be kind of dramatized.”
“I mean, parts of it make it seem like I’m materialistic and stuff,” she said. “And I’m not. Maybe I could have been at one time, but a hundred percent not now.”
Bringing the musical (over which Siegel says she has no creative control) to Broadway has helped her cope with the tragedies she’s suffered. She lost her daughter, Victoria, to a drug overdose in 2015, and her husband — portrayed in the show by Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham — died earlier this year of cancer.
“I saw [Abraham] after the show, he came up to me — I think he was looking for me and he gave me a big hug and I hugged him back,” Siegel shared. “I started crying and I said, ‘Thank you for bringing my husband back to life.’”
