A Fierce Ally to Her Trans Child

THE TONYWINNING ACTRESS AND TEEN SON NIC CHIEN ARE LEARNING WHAT ACCEPTANCE AND SUPPORT LOOK LIKETOGETHER

- By JACK SMART

When Lea Salonga dons a purple blazer to sing a ballad in her new Broadway show Old Friends, she thinks of her son “instantly,” she says. Not only has purple always been Nic Chien’s favorite color, but Stephen Sondheim’s “Loving You” lyrics—“Loving you is not a choice, it’s who I am”—make it easy for Salonga to do what that song requires. “You have to think of the person that you love the most in this world,” the Tony Award winner, 54, says of her only child, whom she shares with her husband, entrepreneur Robert Chien. “Every night I sing it, that’s exactly who’s in my mind.”

At 18, Nic is around the same age his mother was when she left her native Manila to originate the role of Kim in the Broadway-bound musical Miss Saigon, the first of many star-making performances. Not long afterward she provided the singing voice of Jasmine in Aladdin and made history as the first Asian Éponine in Les Misérables on Broadway. What was she like back then? “I was relatively calm and stoic,” recalls Salonga. She nods teasingly toward her son. “Nic, not so much.”