Interview: Checking In with YOUNGER, THE MUSIC MAN Star Sutton Foster on National Dog Day!

Prolific hardly begins to describe the career of Broadway superstar Sutton Foster. Unstoppable as ever she's in the swing of things with the seventh season of Younger on the way and the upcoming Broadway revival of The Music Man starring opposite Hugh Jackman.

We caught up with Foster to chat pups, projects and more!

Happy National Dog Day, Sutton! We heard you've got a special project this year?

I'm partnering with Autotrader.com who came up with the ten best cars for dog lovers. They also have a limited number of dog goggles that they're giving away in a sweepstakes at Dogtrader.com. As part of the program, Autotrader is donating funds to Adopt-a-Pet to support shelter dogs.

My dad worked for General Motors for over 40 years, so I grew up around cars. Now being a mom to both dogs and a daughter, car safety and the safety of my family is really important. And anything that supports dogs and dog adoption and dog safety I'm a fan of!

I've been looking at your dogs' Instagram and I don't know them but I love them.

They're good pups. They've been really sweet. Mabel was the first and then we adopted Brody and I feel like Mabel was like "Why, why would you do this to me when we have a good thing?" And then we adopted our daughter Emily, when Emily came along, Mabel, the Queen Bee, was like "I really don't know what to do now."

Brody is a little more like, I wouldn't say easy-going, but I feel like Mabel took the additions personally, and is slowly coming around. But it's definitely a chaotic full household!

Do you have any other plans to celebrate National Dog Day with them?

Oh that's so sweet! I should. You know, I realized that National Dog Day is my mom's birthday, August 26th this year, and my mom has passed away but then I thought maybe I'll make like a cake and make it edible for the pups and then we can have a big cake celebration. We can celebrate everybody.

Switching gears to Younger, it's been such a huge success, what's it like to be on this journey and to be able to keep the story going?

It's been wild. I never imagined that we would now be picked up for a seventh season. It's been one of the best jobs I've ever had. Coming from the theatre world transitioning to television is one major learning curve, so I feel so grateful to have had this experience where I've had six seasons, now seven seasons to really learn how to be on a TV show. I think about that with theatre, you learn by doing. It's been amazing in so many ways.

And it's been really cool for me to play a character that's evolved. When you do theatre you tell the same story every night and there is opportunity in that, you can kind of go back, you can develop a character, but this has been wonderful to be able to truly grow with the character.

Now, the big question on everyone's mind: how thrilled are you for The Music Man?

I'm really excited to come back to Broadway with The Music Man. I haven't done a big Broadway musical since Anything Goes. I was thinking about it, like "Oh my god, the costumes and the hats!" It's going to be a big show; I'm really looking forward to diving into it. We're doing a couple of different labs and diving back into the material. I'm excited. I'm terrified. All the things. I'm working to find my take and we're figuring out what this production looks like in 2020. I think it's going to be really fun.

And, of course, I'm really looking forward to being able to share all of this with my daughter. She doesn't really know this world yet, so I'm excited to be able to bring her to it. It might be her first Broadway show! To be able to introduce that show to her is very exciting.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos