For the Director of ‘Annie Live!,’ Tonight’s Production Has Been a Lifetime in the Making

When Lear deBessonet was a little girl growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she had a slightly more intense obsession with Annie than most little girls who encountered the musical. When she turned eight, she told her mother she wanted an Annie party—not a celebration with a copper-top cake or Sandy-themed goody bags. She wanted to direct a production. So her classmates were called upon to populate the cast, rehearsals ran through the night, and in the morning, the parents arriving for pickup formed the captive audience.

This Thursday, deBessonet earns a far larger audience as the director of NBC’s live production of Annie, starring Taraji P. Henson as Miss Hannigan, Harry Connick Jr. as Daddy Warbucks, and the 12-year-old Celina Smith—discovered after a nationwide (Zoom) search—as Annie. When I speak to deBessonet on Tuesday afternoon, she’s gearing up for the dress rehearsal, the first of just two before Thursday’s performance. She’s a few minutes late to our conversation, in fact, because she’s been marking for Connick (already on his break) so that the cameraman can plan his shots. “In a music number, a difference of an inch can mean that you get the shot or you don’t,” she explains. “I love that kind of rigor.”

The cameramen, in fact, are a fairly recent addition to the rehearsals—having just joined the production a few days earlier—and a somewhat unfamiliar component for the theater director who was responsible for bringing the Public Theater’s Public Works program to Shakespeare in the Park with The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, The Odyssey, and a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that the New York Times called “as light as the open air.” “Normally in my work,” deBessonet says, “I am focused on transitions that are balletic and energized. In this case, the crew—about 200 people in total—is part of that ballet. And some of that balletic transition work is happening off camera.”