‘Maybe Happy Ending’ star Helen J Shen brings humanity to an android in her Broadway debut: ‘There’s a freedom to her realism’

Helen J Shen is having a whirlwind year on stage. The 25-year-old actress made her Broadway debut — and earned rave reviews — for the hit new musical Maybe Happy Ending, which opened in November. She portrays Claire, a "HelperBot" with obsolete parts, living out her remaining days in a robot retirement facility before she powers down for good. Claire meets another bot named Oliver, played by Darren Criss, and the two flee the facility for one last great adventure. Shen joined Gold Derby to discuss brining a human depth to a cybernetic character.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Gold Derby: You're playing an android. How did you develop her physicality and personality? Because you have to telegraph that she is not human, and yet she still has to possess some humanity.

Helen J Shen: It's a very fine line to walk. I have been playing with it since the beginning of rehearsals and figuring out what physicality will telegraph “android" ... and also injecting the humanness that maybe a person would've programmed into Claire. So there's moments of sarcasm, there's moments of softer movements than maybe Oliver's angular movements. I feel like the way that I've discovered the journey for Claire in the whole piece is we flashback a lot. I find that Claire in the flashbacks is a bit more “factory-reset setting” than after she learns about the world and after she learns about mimicking her owners. It's learning and taking all of that stimulus and then reflecting it back into her own behavior. At the beginning of the show, Claire is at her oldest, and then we flash back to her earlier versions of herself, maybe fresh out of the HelperBot box, if you will. So that's been really fun to play with.

I loved the contrast between you and Darren Criss. Claire has a sarcastic sense of humor while Oliver is very buttoned up. What’s the most exciting part of playing that contrast?

I love knowing how far their characters grow, how different they become by the end. A lot of it is situational. They say a lot in the show that [HelperBot model] Fives are more adept at improvisation, and changing plans is very difficult for a Three. And so planning the trip, the fact that they're not going to just stay at the HelperBot yards for another 12 years, which they wouldn't even survive, leaving the yards to go on this essentially illegal adventure for them, is very dangerous, very high stakes. It is so much easier for Claire to say, “You know what? Our battery life is about to die, so let's just do one last thing just for the heck of it.” And that is a very difficult idea for Oliver to wrap his head around.

But then there's the scene in the car, which I really love to play. It's all this banter that feels sassy upfront, but it's more so all of the anxieties that Oliver has which will end up getting in the way of having a good time on this last adventure. And so I think a lot of that is just stop with the programming. You're doing all of this stuff and you don't have to. And it's about how do you fight [you’re programming]? How do you fight it just a little bit and decide that you want to grow and decide that you want to change? And that advice can be taken for Claire as well. She's been by herself for the past 10 years. That kind of solitude can become comforting. So the song “How to Be Not Alone” becomes a catalyst for Claire.

I was surprised at just how deeply human this robot story is, especially with lyrics like: “When that final moment comes, I'll say hi and shake its hand.” It made me reflect on my personal loves and losses. Did you draw on anything from your own life to play this character?

Yeah. I grew up with lockdown drills about school shootings, and environmentalism being so on the precipice, and social media — the growth of that being so on the forefront. There seems to be, in my teenage angst days, so much more dread about, “Oh, well, what's the point if the world is going to burn up anyway?” And with the pandemic too in my college years. So I think earlier than maybe other generations, I don't want to speak for other generations, but I feel like earlier there's a sense of: things will end. How Claire sees the world, is: yes, they end and that's just factual. Instead of dreading it your whole life, you can kind of be like, well, what do I have right now? I have the present, I have these other Helperbot friends, and there's a kind of comradery in the fact that most of her friends have powered down. And that can be scary ... and maybe there's a community in that, maybe there feels like [Claire's] not alone in this experience. There's a freedom to her realism that I've really loved exploring. And obviously with the pandemic, we all know what isolation feels like and we all know what it then feels like to feel how big the world can be. And that's a sensation…that really resonated with me. After being in each other's units, finally the iris opens up and we feel expansive and we feel overwhelmed by how vast the world is. I love that. I love the profundity of that. And then it's all veiled in this delicious rom-com that gives you a belly laugh.

At age 25 you're having quite a year. You earned a Lucille Lortel nomination for The Lonely Few Off-Broadway, you made your Broadway debut, your name is above the title next to a major star, and it's a show with two Asian leads, which is not commonplace on Broadway. Have all of these milestones really hit you yet?

Yes and no. It was a year ago when I heard that I had gotten the role … and since then, so many milestones have happened. So many firsts have happened. The actual stepping on a Broadway stage in front of an audience, and recording the cast album for the first time, and hearing it and getting to share that with people who can't come to New York. My first late-night show, and Vogue, and all these swirling things that have happened because people are loving the show, is so wonderful. And I think that 10 years down the line is only when I can really understand just how wild it all is. I feel like it happens so fast. But our cast is full of Broadway debuts, our complete company is full of people who never thought anything like this would ever happen. And so it's been so lovely to share in the firsts with them and hold each other's hands and be like, are you kidding? This is so crazy! Are you kidding? And it all happened around us. To see how the stage door has built … our Broadway community is really special. I feel just so bowled over by the reception of it all. But also in rehearsal, we all knew that this piece was very special. So it sometimes feels like we were right. We felt it, but we couldn't have anticipated that so many other people would feel it the same way that we did. So it just feels like a nice affirmation.

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