At just 25, Helen J Shen is commanding Broadway in her lead debut as Claire in Maybe Happy Ending, a quietly radical, genre-bending musical about love, mortality, and robots. In a moment that feels both personal and historic, the Chinese American actor opens up about representation, family, performance, and the transformative power of the stage.
Finding her spotlight
When Helen J Shen first saw her name emblazoned on the marquee of the Belasco Theatre, it finally hit her: she was the star of a Tony-nominated Broadway musical. Just months earlier, she was working off-Broadway as an understudy, sending in an audition tape for a quirky Korean American musical about human-like robots in love. That musical—Maybe Happy Ending—would not only bring her to center stage, but rewrite the narrative for what Broadway stardom could look like.
“It was such a blessing that I had no time to worry about it,” Shen recalls, laughing. Her callback, opposite Emmy and Golden Globe winner Darren Criss, might have been a nerve-wracking moment for most, but Shen’s focus was too narrow for anxiety. Raised in New Jersey by Chinese immigrant parents, she was used to high-stakes performance—she had played piano competitively since age five, gracing Carnegie Hall while still a child. That classical rigor became the bedrock for her work ethic, though she now looks back on it as “an exercise on the nerves, with a lot of pressure and sweaty palms.”
Still, it prepared her for the demands of Broadway: eight shows a week, no intermission, and no shortcuts. “There are no pee breaks,” she jokes. “And it’s a cruel joke because our characters mention avoiding water, so we’ve had to get creative about sneaking in sips.”
Playing a robot with a dying battery—and a living soul
In Maybe Happy Ending, Shen plays Claire, a sardonic “HelperBot” nearing the end of her battery life. The character is complex: dry-witted, fatalistic, and quietly yearning for connection. “She’s very no-bullshit,” Shen says. “She starts from a dire place, but that gives her a certain freedom—to live in the now.”
Claire’s unexpected romance with Oliver, Criss’s sweet, analog-loving bot, is tender, philosophical, and refreshingly free of cliché. What starts as an offbeat sci-fi tale becomes an emotionally rich meditation on impermanence, purpose, and love. “This show captures the feeling that the world is spinning out of control,” Shen says. “But within that chaos, we still have power over how we connect. That’s what people are responding to.”
Seven months into the show’s run, Shen is still absorbing the impact. With 10 Tony nominations—including Best Musical—Maybe Happy Ending has become both a critical and cultural conversation piece. “Our attitude from the start was, ‘This could all be over tomorrow,’” she says. “So this reception has been a very pleasant surprise.”
Representation, without explanation
Perhaps most strikingly, Maybe Happy Ending is a rare Broadway show with two Asian-American leads—and a story that doesn’t center on their ethnicity. “It’s not about Asian struggles or trauma,” Shen explains. “It just happens to look like this—and it’s resonating with people from all walks of life.”
Still, she’s aware of the significance. “I’ve had moms at the stage door say, ‘I’ve taken my daughter to hundreds of Broadway shows and never thought I’d see something like this.’ That hits me hard,” she says. “Lea Salonga made me feel like this was possible. Now I hope this show does that for someone else.” Her performance is a subtle act of radical visibility: not just playing a role, but embodying the future of Broadway—diverse, human, and unconstrained by legacy formats.
Family, fame, and the fire of performance
For Shen, the Broadway spotlight is also a personal victory. “My parents put a lot of their hopes on me,” she shares. “They always told me to manage expectations, but they still believed in the dream.” When her mom ran down the mezzanine stairs screaming after Shen’s debut, it was more than pride—it was generational catharsis. “They’ve sent all their friends. Their group chats are blowing up. And they love the subway ads,” she says, grinning.
Now navigating a new kind of visibility, Shen is cautious about the effects of public life. “Having access to so many opinions—good or bad—is not necessarily in our DNA,” she says. Watching her partner, Dear Evan Hansen star Andrew Barth Feldman, manage fame has helped her understand the surreal nature of Broadway celebrity. “It’s beyond human scale,” she reflects.
Between gender, AI, and androgyny
Technology—especially AI—is central to Maybe Happy Ending’s narrative and to Shen’s own musings. “It’s a monster we created,” she says. “But the show asks: can we use it to feel closer, instead of more isolated?” As Claire, she plays a robot with startling humanity—emotional, curious, capable of love and grief. “There’s this ethical dilemma,” she adds, “of what makes something human, if it has consciousness and an end date.”
Offstage, Shen (who uses she/they pronouns) is candid about their evolving relationship with gender. “I love a big shirt, big pants, sneakers,” she says. “In my adulthood, I’ve leaned into more androgynous dressing, and I feel more like myself. Gender is already a social construct to me—it’s nice to match how I feel inside on the outside.”
Playing the very femme-presenting Claire—long wig, sparkly skirt and all—has been an exercise in duality. “She’s very feminine in design, but I find little moments to let my gremlin tendencies peek through,” Shen laughs. “Femininity isn’t a monolith. And performing within that spectrum has been a celebration of self, not a contradiction.”
Dreams inside dreams
For someone who’s just made a splashy Broadway debut, Shen remains grounded and wide-eyed. “This journey has already been full of dreams come true,” she says. “It’s like one giant umbrella dream, with all these mini dreams underneath.”
She’s open to film and television, and has one dream collaborator in mind: “Anything written by Sara Bareilles. That’s a no-brainer.” But above all, Shen wants to keep telling stories that matter. “What we do on that stage—we care about it deeply. That’s the feeling I’m chasing.” In Maybe Happy Ending, Claire is a robot whose battery is dying. But in Helen J Shen’s hands, the character pulses with life, love, and a sense of possibility. And for Broadway’s newest breakout star, this may be just the beginning.
Photography: Stephanie Geddes
Styled by: Jensen Edmondson
Hair and Makeup: Moe
Creative Consultant: Mariana Suplicy
