Keala Settle
Keala Settle is an actor, born 1975.
One song did most of it. Settle is a stage singer who originated Norma Valverde in Hands on a Hardbody on Broadway in 2013, picking up Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for it, then joined the original cast of Waitress in 2016 as Becky, which is where anyone who follows musicals already knew exactly who she was.
Then The Greatest Showman happened. She played Lettie Lutz and sang This Is Me, the number that turned a mid-sized film musical into a phenomenon; the song won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song and was nominated for the Academy Award. The performance deserves separating from the marketing that swallowed it. She delivers it with a physical defiance that most film musicals sand off, and it is the only moment in the picture with any grain in it.
Screen work since has been supporting and slightly puzzling in scale. She is Miss Coddle in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, a small role in an enormous production; Viv in All My Life; Bev in This Time Next Year; a run on the Disney series Big Shot. The film industry has not yet found a part shaped like her. Broadway had one ready before it ever asked.
Movies (8)
TV (2)
Where to start with Keala Settle
The Greatest Showman is unavoidable and you may as well watch it. The film is corny and knows it, but her number is the one sequence with real weight, and it is a performance rather than just a vocal.
After that the screen pickings are slim. Wicked and Wicked: For Good use her in a minor part and are worth your time on their own merits rather than for her. Ricki and the Flash is the earliest credit here and a good film about a working musician. All My Life and This Time Next Year are modest romantic dramas where she does the supportive-friend job better than it is written.
Big Shot is the best long-form use of her, a Disney sports comedy that hands her actual scenes. For the real thing, though, you want a cast recording, not a film.