How did ‘Tammy Faye’ make it to Broadway? With a little help — OK, a lot — from Elton John

Recently, Elton John had this to say about another larger-than-life gay icon: “Tammy Faye’s story is meant for the stage.”

He should know. For more than a decade now, John has been shepherding a show centered around the life of Tammy Faye Bakker , the late Charlotte-region televangelist. That’ s not an unusual amount of development time for a Broadway musical.

John also wrote the music for “Tammy Faye,” which premiered in London in 2022 and had a successful, award-winning run there. Now it will make its Broadway debut Oct. 19 , and the New York Times recently touted “Tammy Faye” as one of the new shows to catch this fall.

The show tracks the ups and downs of Tammy Faye and her then-husband Jim Bakker. The Bakkers rose to fame and fortune running the PTL religious TV network near Charlotte in the 1970s and ’80s before it all imploded in financial ruin and a sex scandal involving Jim Bakker, who landed in prison for fraud.

Tammy Faye persevered. She divorced Bakker and later married a friend of his, Roe Messner.

Other than her height (she was 4-foot-11), everything about Tammy Faye was big, from her hair to her heart — and among other things the show explores how she was one of the rare evangelical Christians who embraced the gay community at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Tammy Faye Messner died of colon cancer in 2007 at age 65.

But her fame lived on, including inspiring a documentary then an Oscar-winning movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

The Charlotte Observer recently spoke with two people who played a key part in the life of the musical: British actress Katie Brayben , who won an Olivier Award (Britain’s top theater award) last year for her portrayal of Tammy Faye; and Jake Shears , who wrote the lyrics for the show while collaborating with John.

Both are also making their Broadway debuts with the show.

Writing songs with Elton John

Even as a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the ‘80s, Shears found himself drawn to Tammy Faye and her story.

Despite the PTL empire imploding during that time, she reminded Shears of his own mom, “full of an amazing set of Christian values... full of kindness and warmth, and just always has had a kind disposition like Tammy’s.”

The 45-year-old Shears now divides his time between London and New Orleans, is a founding member of the pop and glam rock band Scissor Sisters . He made his acting debut in London’s West End as the Emcee in “Cabaret” and hosts a podcast called “Queer the Music,” which celebrates the anthems that shaped queer lives.

In a Zoom interview from London, Shears called “Tammy Faye” a fun, exuberant show that can be “sneakily subversive” but without any finger-wagging. Songs in the show include “Satellite of God,” “He’s Inside Me” and “Bring Me the Face of Tammy Bakker.”

As for his songwriting partner, Shears said he, John, and John’s husband David Furnish have been close friends for a couple decades now.”They’re like family to me,” Shears said.

About a dozen years ago, Shears recalled, he was at one of John’s birthday parties when John turned to him and said, “We just got the rights to do the Tammy Faye musical. Would you like to do this with me?”

As Shears put it: “And of course, I just flipped out and was on board immediately.”

He got busy researching all things Tammy Faye, and approached writing the lyrics with a sense of warmth and humor, aiming to poke fun — but not make fun — of the characters.

So what’s it like actually working on songs with the Elton John, when he’s writing the music and you have to come up with the words?

Shears described it this way: They were usually in a room together, where Shears brought broad brushstrokes for lyrics. John picked out something he likes, sat down at the piano and got to work. Oh, and he’d tell Shears to go around the corner because he didn’t want him in his sights while he started to concentrate on coming up with ideas for the music.

“When he’s ready, which is not very long, he asks me to come (back) in,” Shears said. He’d stand behind John at the piano as they began moving through the tunes. After hearing John’s melodies, it was Shears’ turn to retreat for 45 minutes to an hour to refine the words.

Then they’d continue to reshape the song together before getting ready to record a demo of it. That work typically happened in LA and Las Vegas studios. In Vegas, John worked on the songs during the day and performed in concert at night.

“Those were really fun trips,” Shears said. “What I love about working with Elton, improvisationally, is that neither of us puts up any hurdles. We just keep going and keep moving and creating.”

That creative process stretched across a number of years. During COVID, they had to work remotely on the songs. Even after the show’s 2022 London run ended, they wrote a new song for the production called “Don’t Shine A Light.”

It was part of Shears’ goals to have the various songs in the show “really sound like Elton John songs.” Working on that last song, they already had landed on the chorus when the melody fell into place. “It was really just a great ‘aha’ sort of thing,” Shears said.

And as recently as two months before the show hit Broadway, Shears was busy refining other lyrics to make them as sharp and as could be.

One more thing. For the demos, John handled all the vocals, even for the female roles.

“When the demos really take shape, it’s just a really fun feeling in the room. There’s a buzz that happens. And yeah, there’s nothing like it. Nothing.”

Channeling Tammy Faye

Brayben seems to make a habit of taking to the stage to play real people, from Princess Diana in “King Charles III” to the title role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” for which she also won an Olivier as best actress.

But before she got involved with “Tammy Faye,” Brayben had never heard of the Bakkers. “I don’t think there’s many (British) people that knew who the Bakkers were,” she said in a recent Zoom interview from her home in southwest England.

That quickly changed. Brayben dove into researching her character, and was fascinated by what she called an extraordinary life full of peaks and valleys.

She compared the Bakkers to the Kardashians and other reality TV stars, and how Jim and Tammy did it first with “100% of their life on television.” Jim Bakker typically handled the preaching on the show while his wife did the singing.

Brayben cited a pivotal moment for Tammy Faye (and the show) when she warmly interviewed a gay pastor with HIV on her television program in 1985. It was at a time when much of the evangelical community — and much of the country — wanted nothing to do with gay people who had a new disease called AIDS.

“I think she gave a voice to the voiceless,” Brayben said. “It was so unbelievably powerful... You’ve got Tammy openly saying we should love everyone.”

She also spoke about how Tammy Faye bonded with her audience through song something Brayben easily relates to. “Her singing was such a massive thing on the (PTL) show. She had this ability to emotionally connect with people through music.”

Ultimately, Brayben said, “Tammy Faye” is about Tammy Faye’s legacy. “You’re gonna have a good time. My hope is that you also feel a bit of the arms-open love that is her legacy, too.”

In London, both Brayben and Shears met in person with another part of that legacy, her son Jay.

Brayben, who was pregnant during the show’s run, recalled the “wonderful relationship” Jay Bakker had with his mom. “She was a devoted mother, and so that was an incredibly visceral experience for me to speak to him after the show. I never forgot that,” Brayben said.

Neither would Shears, even though he acknowledged, “It’s really scary showing somebody a musical about their mother.”

He needn’t have worried. “It was very moving when he saw the show,” Shears said. “Because he just wept, and said he felt like he kind of got to be in the same room with his mom for the last time.”

When asked what Tammy Faye herself would make of the show, Brayben paused for a moment, then said, “Honestly, I feel like she’s there. I’m not someone who is religious, but I’ve learned a lot about faith through learning about her and doing the show every night. She’s 100% there.

“I think she would cackle a lot at the show. And I think it would also feel very cathartic.”

‘Tammy Faye’

Where: Palace Theatre, 160 W. 47th St. in, New York City.

When: Performances begin Oct. 19.

Tickets: Prices start at $59.70.

More info: tammyfayebway.com .

Worth noting: “Tammy Faye” also stars Broadway vets and two-time Tony winners Christian Borle as Jim Bakker and Michael Cerveris as Jerry Falwell, the main villain of the piece.

Fun fact: The Charlotte Observer is also repped in “Tammy Faye,” with a character based on former reporter Charles Shepard , who led the Pulitzer-winning team that exposed the various PTL scandals.

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