Making Moulin Rouge!’s La Chocolat: How Jacqueline B. Arnold Keeps Her Body in Sonya Tayeh Shape

Jacqueline B. Arnold defies expectation. At 46, she is battement-ing and plie-ing like she’s in her teens, she exemplifies beauty, sex appeal, and passion in a quartet that "represent, what I think, culturally we know as the Moulin Rouge,” she says in her episode of Playbill’s exclusive five-part documentary series that focuses on the actors who bring The Lady Ms of Moulin Rouge! to vibrant life.

In the video above, which was filmed in February and subsequently seven months into the pandemic, Arnold discusses her passions on and off stage, including her role as "La Chocolat" in the critically acclaimed Moulin Rouge! The Musical and her side business, The Kitchen Chemists. We get a close-up look at the treatments that keep her body healthy, her process transforming into La Chocolat (warmups and makeup galore!). The triple threat also ponders what she has in common with La Chocolat; the effect of a live audience; equality, inclusion, and representation; and what it will be like to return to the stage of Broadway's Al Hirschfeld Theatre when Broadway re-opens.