Senzel Ahmady describes a princess as someone who puts others before herself, is courageous, caring, and fights for what she believes in. Ahmady was certainly courageous when she first auditioned for Princess Jasmine in Aladdin’s national tour as an undergraduate in vocal performance in musical theater for NYU. She recalls doing five auditions and in the final callbacks seeing six Jasmine’s and three Aladdin’s when she met her co-star Adi Roy.
“I think Adi and I had an instant connection in the audition room. We both were previously going to NYU so we bonded over that. We also were the youngest in the room, both 20, so it was easy to get along with each other. My gut told me he’d be Aladdin,” she said.
The cast of Aladdin had about five weeks in a studio in New York for the rehearsal process. Ahmady notes the difficult part of portraying Jasmine is as much as you want to play the Disney Princess you also want to play the realness of it because at the end of the day, she’s still a real person.
“I feel like I’m constantly bouncing back between being a Princess but also being myself at the same so she comes off as a little bit more real, ” she said.
The biggest lesson she learned while on tour is that not every performance will be 10/10. Doing 8 shows a week she has to pace herself and knows that” the best show you can do every night is the best show your body can give both physically and mentally.”
Her favorite scene in the musical changes daily but right now she says it’s when Jasmine and Aladdin meet in the marketplace during the song called Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, and Kassim when the audience is introduced to his friend group.
“My favorite quality of Jasmine is that she stands for what she believes in. She’s the only female lead in our show and I’m glad they gave her some agency and the will to fight for herself,” she said.
Hearing the overture of Aladdin makes you feel like you’re in a Disney movie according to Senzel.
Growing up, Ahmady felt that Aladdin was her movie and Jasmine was her princess so getting to portray Jasmine is a huge deal.
“I was that little brown girl who went to Disneyland in my own Princess Jasmine costume and now I have my Jasmine costume that was made for me and I get to be her every single night for a bunch of other little brown girls. It’s so exciting to be the person they look up to because I know I looked up to other girls who were also Jasmine at the time,” she said.
Afterwards, she loves to encounter fans of the show and meeting an Afghan or Filipino family. In fact, her dad is from Afghanistan and her mom is from the Philippines.
“There’s nothing more fulfilling than them telling me they felt so happy that they felt represented on that stage because I know I didn’t feel like that growing up doing musical theater,” she said.