Growing up in Downers Grove, Ill., Patten was an early bloomer, staging home concerts in her living room when she was 3. “Apparently, the first song I sang was a Hank Williams song, ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues,’ where he talks about drowning himself in a river because his woman left him,” she said. Commercials and theater roles soon followed.
Patten made her Broadway debut in “Fun Home.” In 2021, she received a Tony for her role in “Jagged Little Pill,” but the show was criticized for changing Patten’s character, Jo, from seemingly nonbinary to gay and cisgender when the production moved from Boston to Broadway. In 2021, Patten released a mea culpa, in the form of a video conversation with the trans writer and activist Shakina Nayfack. “There’s a lot I wish was handled differently,” Patten said, looking back. “But I do feel grateful that even with something that was obviously a painful moment, I think it has a potential to move things forward in the industry.”
Like Patten, Renée also began performing at an early age, winning singing competitions by the time she was 12. “I thought I was going to be a Christian music artist,” she said. In high school, however, she fell in love with the theater, and at 22, within three months of arriving in New York, she was offered roles in three Broadway shows. “I picked the flop,” she said of “Big Fish.”
Then came a starring role in “Frozen,” though her run was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. “Every night I’d see these little girls, Black girls, girls of color, wearing Elsa, Anna, Olaf,” she said. “They were just so excited about their favorite characters, and about getting to see the leads of a show being played by women of color. I know how impactful that is, because I know that, growing up, I never saw it.”
