Brooklyn Nelson

Nelson was born in Huntington, West Virginia,[3] to Tara and Todd Nelson. She has a younger sister.[4] Nelson became passionate about theater at the age of eight, when she landed a role in The Little Mermaid Jr. at Huntington's First Stage Theater.[1] Subsequently, she appeared in several local productions by First Stage, Curtain Up Players and the Huntington Regional Theater.[1][4][5] Nelson expressed interest in becoming a Broadway actress after seeing a performance of Matilda the Musical.[1][5] In 2015, she graduated from fifth-grade at Village of Barboursville Elementary School.[5] Nelson was a student at Barboursville Middle School.[1] She remained enrolled while rehearsing and performing Frozen; her schoolwork was done online. As of 2018, she lives in New York City with her mother and sister.[4]

After Nelson expressed interest in performing on Broadway, her mother searched for open casting calls on the internet.[1] In April 2015, she auditioned for Matilda the Musical;[5] she was cast after multiple callbacks.[1] In the last, she and three others were chosen out of thirteen girls. She rehearsed for eight to nine hours a day for six weeks to familiarize herself with the show's choreography and music.[5] Her 16-month run in Matilda the Musical began in September 2015 at age eleven, where she was a small girl swing,[lower-alpha 1] shifting between the roles of Lavender and Amanda Thripp. She eventually moved fully onto the role of Amanda.[1][5][6]

In February 2017, she attended an audition for Disney's Frozen, a Broadway adaptation of the 2013 film of the same name. After three callbacks, she was cast as young Elsa.[1] For several weeks, Nelson attended rehearsals for approximately eight hours a day (including tutoring and schoolwork), six days a week.[4] An older sister herself, Nelson took inspiration from her real-life dynamics with her younger sister and family. She first played the role in the Denver tryout in 2017, sharing it with Ayla Schwartz.[1] Reception towards the show was mixed, though the performances garnered praise.[7] Critics commended Nelson,[8][9] with Variety stating: "The grown actresses [playing Anna and Elsa] are matched pound for wee pound by the youngsters playing Anna and Elsa as girls. ... Nelson captures a big sister's kind attentiveness and, later, her guilt at accidentally harming [Anna]."[10] Subsequently, she and Schwartz originated the role on Broadway in March 2018.[4] She appeared in four of the production's eight weekly performances.[1] She left the cast at the end of April 2018.[6]

In 2017, Nelson voiced Nazuna Oikawa in the English dub of anime film Fireworks,[11] which received mixed reviews.[12] Her second voice role came in 2018's Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, another anime film, in which she provided the English dub for the character of Medmel.[13] The same year, Nelson appeared as the titular character in Megan's Christmas Miracle.[3][14]

• Official website
• Brooklyn Nelson at IMDb
• Brooklyn Nelson at the Internet Broadway Database