Adam Lambert, Auli’i Cravalho to join ‘Cabaret’ Broadway cast

The American Idol runner-up and Moana star will replace Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin as the Emcee and Sally Bowles in the Tony Award-winning musical revival.

UPDATE: Alongside Adam Lambert and Auli’i Cravalho, Calvin Leon Smith (Fat Ham on Broadway, The Underground Railroad) will join the Cabaret Broadway cast as Clifford Bradshaw on September 16.

Willkommen! Musician Adam Lambert and film actress Auli’i Cravalho will join the cast of Cabaret on Broadway, beginning September 16 at the August Wilson Theatre.

Lambert is best known as the runner-up on season 8 of American Idol, and he has collaborated with Queen as the rock band’s lead vocalist since 2011. He also performed twice in the national tour of the musical Wicked tickets — first in the ensemble and then as Fiyero.

"Growing up on the musical theatre stage, it was always a childhood dream to perform on Broadway," Lambert said in a statement. "With this production of Cabaret, it finally felt like the right time to accept an invitation to make my debut. The themes of this show have always resonated with me and, given the current sociopolitical climate the world is in, feel eerily timely. Eddie and Gayle have been a dream pairing and I’m looking forward to working with Auli’i to create our own magic."

Cravalho is known for various musical projects on stage and screen, most famously voicing the title role in Disney’s animated film Moana and playing Janis in the 2024 film adaptation of the Mean Girls Broadway musical. In 2023, she starred in Sunset Boulevard at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center opposite Stephanie J. Block and Derek Klena.

“I’m thrilled to join the long line of talented women who have taken on the iconic Sally Bowles; most recently, the woman I watched with notebook and pen in hand, the dynamite Gayle Rankin," Cravalho said in a statement. "To join a show with so much history – and such a stellar cast and crew – means it’s quite literally an honor to get my butt kicked each week. Mahalo palena ʻole family, I wouldn’t be making this debut without you.”

The performers will now make their Broadway debuts in the role of the Emcee and Sally Bowles, respectively, originated by 2024 Tony Award nominees Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin through September 14. Lambert and Cravalho will perform through March 30, 2025.

The Cabaret Broadway cast also includes 2024 Tony nominees Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider and Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz, Ato Blankson-Wood as Cliff Bradshaw, Natascia Diaz as Fraulein Kost/Fritzie, and Henry Gottfried as Ernst Ludwig.

John Kander and Fred Ebb’s classic musical Cabaret takes place in the 1930s at Berlin’s Kit Kat Club, an escapist nightclub that gradually gets overtaken by fascism and Nazism. The Tony Award-nominated revival, which won numerous awards for its 2021 London premiere under the direction of Rebecca Frecknall, is semi-immersive, transforming the theatre into the Kit Kat Club with refreshments, pre-show entertainment, and cabaret-style seating on all sides of the stage.

Photo credit: Adam Lambert and Auli'i Cravalho as the Emcee and Sally Bowles. (Photo courtesy of production)