Hugh Jackman gushed over ‘dream’ Sutton Foster before romance: ‘I’ve watched everything she’s done’
“Kiss her already!”
That’s what Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster would hear from hecklers when they performed in “The Music Man” together — and that they did.
Years before their rumored new romance went public, the actors appeared on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” to promote their Broadway musical after the COVID pandemic.
“Broadway was nonexistent for almost two years. And I feel like there’s this shared sense of gratitude between the people onstage and the audience. And the show is so joyful, and I’m having the time of my life playing opposite this guy,” Foster, 49, gushed in May 2022.
“You had to say that, but thank you,” Jackman, 56, teased.
“I did!” Foster added. “But it’s like — it’s a dream come true. Truly.”
The pair played Professor Harold Hill and Marian Paroo, respectively, onstage, and reminisced on some of their most memorable scenes together.
“The Music Man” ran on the Great White Way from December 2021 to January 2023.
“We’re in the second act. We have a very long scene together where we’re like breaking down and starting to, like, fall for each other, and this person is sneezing repeatedly. And then at one point he went, ‘Bless you,'” the “Younger” actress recalled to host Seth Meyers.
“And then it was over and then he exits and just leaves me onstage to have to endure the wrath,” she added.
The two also agreed that they were “intimidated” by each other at the time.
“Yes. You’re Hugh Jackman,” Foster exclaimed on the NBC late-night show. “And then our names are, like, really big on, like, a giant billboard. And I was like, ‘Oh God, that’s gonna cost a lot of money when they have to replace me.’ … But I was pretty convinced I was going to be fired for several weeks.”
The “Wolverine” actor noted that he “certainly” was intimidated by the actress as well.
“This is a six-time Tony nominee, two-time winner. Like, I saw her do ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ when you were like 4 years old. But I’ve watched everything she’s done,” he said, praising her. “It’s amazing. And I’m the guy who, in my first show, ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ it was in my contract that I had to have singing lessons once a week.”
Earlier this month, news broke that Jackman and Foster are “in love” but have been keeping their romance a secret.
“They spend all of their free time together,” a source told Page Six. “They are a regular couple, they are just in private.” To stay under the radar, “they sneak around.”
Foster recently filed for divorce from her husband of 10 years, “Ocean’s Eleven” screenwriter Ted Griffin. The exes have an adopted daughter together. She also put her Tuxedo Park, NY, home on the market for $2.2 million.
Jackman, meanwhile, announced the end of his 27-year marriage to actress Deborra-Lee Furness in September 2023.
“Deborra-Lee had her suspicions when Hugh started working with Sutton,” a source told the Daily Mail on Saturday. “Their relationship is not a secret to her.”
