Elizabeth Gillies and Graham Phillips bring decades of friendship to the Off-Broadway stage

The former teenage co-stars are tackling twisted territory in The New Group’s production of the psychological thriller Rope this fall.

Summary

• Elizabeth Gillies and Graham Phillips co-star in the play Rope off Broadway from October 13 to December 6
• They previously made their Broadway debuts together in 13 and later co-starred in Little Shop of Horrors
• The two discuss their longtime offstage friendship, the parallels between their current and past roles, and what they bring to their onstage collaboration
• Rope is a psychological thriller about a dinner party thrown by hosts with a dark secret

Almost two decades ago, in 2008, Elizabeth Gillies and Graham Phillips made their Broadway debuts as teens in the cast of the musical 13, forging a connection that would endure long afterward. After pursuing separate TV careers — Gillies in Victorious and Dynasty, Phillips in The Good Wife and Riverdale — they reunited as Seymour and Audrey in the hit Off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors in 2025. Now, the longtime friends are bringing their chemistry and collaborative shorthand to a decidedly different genre than musical comedy, starring in Gordon Greenberg’s new adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s twisted 1929 drama Rope.

The story revolves around a tense, mysterious dinner party hosted by two dangerously bored Princeton graduates (played by Cameron Monaghan and Corey Fogelmanis) in their chic Manhattan apartment, where they dine around a trunk that harbors a sinister secret. Among the unsuspecting guests are Leila (Gillies), a serious film student from Sarah Lawrence who uses humor to deflect her social discomfort, and Richard Raglan (Phillips), an agreeable Princeton legacy student whose convictions shift depending on who is in the room.

“It’s a wild group of people,” Gillies said of the play’s characters. “They’re all very, very different, obviously, and it’s fun to watch.” She likened the eclectic gathering to the advice found in Joan Crawford’s 1971 book on entertaining, My Way of Life. “She was like, ‘You should sit a doctor next to a plumber,’” Gillies noted. “It’s the most ridiculous set of guidelines for a dinner party. But the point is to get as diverse a group of people as you possibly can so that the conversation is interesting and the night is lively and unpredictable, and Rope does that.”

Because their characters’ storylines are intertwined romantically and exist on the periphery of the play’s heaviest material, the friends have found themselves laughing a lot in rehearsals. But bringing their 18 years of history to Rope is “a blessing and a curse,” Gillies joked. During a recent dinner near the rehearsal studio, a fan recognized the pair and sent over free appetizers. “She said, ‘You raised me. I’m a 13 fan,’” the actress recalled.

The duo acknowledged that their Rope characters carry playful echoes of their past roles. Richard holds a bit of Phillips's 13 character Evan’s core motivation, while Gillies sees hints of 13's queen bee Lucy in Leila. “Evan just wanted to be cool,” Phillips said. “And everyone was wondering, why isn’t Evan with Lucy?”

“Exactly,” Gillies added. “So now they are.”

Gillies noted that while Leila usually commands a room to mask her insecurities, Richard easily breaks through that facade. “She comes in and she’s used to being the center of attention, and he immediately disarms her with his earnestness and his humor,” Gillies said. For Phillips, Richard’s eagerness to please requires a balancing act so the character doesn’t become too wishy-washy. “There’s the 1950s trope of a man who knows what he wants, but constantly changing that flagpole depending on what the person across from me requires is the fun game of it all.” Gillies playfully dubbed the pair a “black cat, golden retriever combo,” with Richard rolling over for proverbial belly scratches while Leila supplies the claws.

For Gillies, working with Phillips again brings back muscle memory from their first foray into Broadway. “There was a level of professionalism that was instilled in us as children,” Gillies explained. “I do feel like the same little kid in rehearsals at 14, 15 years old, when we were doing 13 almost 20 years ago, as I do now as a 33-year-old woman because you just fall into certain patterns.”

Phillips noted that the zippiness required for their previous musical-comedy performances has served them well. “We’re leaning on that zip, zop, zoom, keep-the-ball-in-the-air kind of thing in the rehearsal space,” he said. That energy propels director Scott Elliott’s highly experimental rehearsal room and creative process, which the self-described Type-A Gillies saw as an enlightening challenge.

“I’ve never had a director who just wants us to play and try a million things again and again, as opposed to going right for a result,” Gillies said. Phillips agreed, adding that the collaborative, theatre-troupe vibe of The New Group, the Elliott-led company producing Rope, means the entire cast is present for work on scenes they are and aren’t in. “Seeing our input, even on things that our characters aren’t involved in, turn into shifts in the story is ultimately empowering on some level,” Phillips noted.

The result of that deep exploration is a production that aims to keep the audience completely off balance. When asked what they hope theatregoers leave Rope with, Phillips answered simply: “Fear.” Gillies added that she wants audiences to feel like they just survived an escape room. “The way this night and these characters carry on with the incredibly intense, dark secret that lies in the center of the room is where the excitement, the thrill, and the fun comes into play,” she said.

The duo is finding plenty of levity behind the scenes, too. “I have a dream that this play becomes like Rocky Horror, where people see it a million times and then shout out things and throw things at us during certain parts, but I don’t think the creative team wants that,” Gillies joked. “But that’s also me because I love camp. And I love my costume. We haven’t seen my wig yet, but I will be wigged. I just really want everyone to know that.”

Get Rope tickets now.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Gillies, Graham Phillips, and the cast of Rope off Broadway. (Photos by Serge Nivelle)