Broadway, TV, and film performer Phillipa Soo—known for debuting the role of Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton: The Musical in 2015 and the role of Guinevere in 2023’s Camelot revival—has a new star turn as a picture book coauthor. With her sister-in-law Maris Pasquale Doran, a social worker and psychotherapist, Soo cocreated Piper Chen Sings. Piper, who bears no small resemblance to Soo, is a Chinese American girl with an unstoppable love of song and a smidgen of stage fright. Soo and Pasquale Doran spoke with PW about picture book composition, Asian American representation, and the advice that a show business success would give to her younger self.

When did you two decide to work together?

Phillipa Soo: It all started at the Pasquale Christmas party in 2018. My husband Steven Pasquale [also an actor] is Maris’s brother, and we were talking about life and art and all things. Maris and I were both like, “I want to write a children's book.” At the time, I was coming off the Hamilton experience and I was thinking about what I wanted to say to young people. There were a lot of young fans of Hamilton, and I was often asked two questions: “What do you do when you get nervous?” and “What would you tell your younger self?” I thought, how wonderful and cool would it be to write a children’s book [to answer those questions]? Bucket list! We decided, “Let’s write one together. Why not?”

Maris Pasquale Doran: I have two kids. At that time, they were quite young, and I was living in picture book world and telling my own stories to them every day. I’d done some private writing and I was having a lot of fun with it. Then, as Phillipa says, we came to that knowledge and thought, “This is a chance to work together and hang out.”

How did your project develop into Piper Chen Sings?

Soo: We met a couple of times, and then the pandemic happened. We took a little bit of a pause in 2020, as the world was upside down and we were all sequestered. Then 2021 rolled around, and especially in the wake of the anti-Asian sentiments that were happening, I was passionate about sharing Asian stories. Piper Chen was one of my ideas, and the pitch was basically “She’s my avatar.” She’s a little version of me and very much an answer to “What would you tell your younger self?”

Who brought you to Random House Studio for this project?

Soo: A huge shoutout to [Random House Studio publisher] Lee Wade and to [Random House Children’s Books president and publisher] Barbara Marcus! I had done an afterword for the Eliza Hamilton picture book [Barbara McNamara and Esmé Shapiro’s Eliza: The Story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, to be rereleased in paperback on April 2], and they were like, “If you ever have any ideas, let us know.” I was so grateful for that connection, and they were extremely enthusiastic about the idea of Piper Chen, a Chinese American girl navigating an issue that real kids feel.

How did you work with your editor, Lee Wade, on early drafts?

Doran: When we were brainstorming, we wanted this to be a special book for grownups and kids to read aloud. Of course, with Phillipa’s history and success, the fact that it is so lyrical was very intentional. We had a lot of “aha” moments when we came to reading it out loud and thinking, “That feels very poetic” or “That feels very much like a song.”

Soo: Lee said very specifically, “It’s like a poem.” Figuring out what we wanted [each] moment to be was a helpful process for us—right, Maris?—because we were able to visualize and then distill it, to have economy in all those beautiful moments. As an artist, I felt challenged but supported. I felt like Piper does, excited and scared. You put in all the work, you do all the storyboarding, to come into a singular, simple human moment. I’ll carry this process with me in the art that I make as an actor.

When and how did you get together with Toronto-based artist Qin Leng, illustrator of picture books including Bompa’s Insect Expedition and Clover?

Soo: We wanted something that felt handmade and maybe a little bit nostalgic. It was a perfect pairing, because we ended up with an artist who’s an Asian woman, a mother, and someone who works with watercolors, specifically because my grandmother—my Nǎi Nai—was a painter as well as a pianist. Since Piper is sort of my avatar, I did send her some pictures of myself as a girl—me and my Nǎi Nai—and she drew from that for inspiration.

Doran: Despite the fact that we were not directly collaborating outside of our notes in the margins, Qin was able to show what we were trying to express and the emotions we wanted to exude.

Throughout the story, Piper confides in her grandmother. Nǎi Nai is the one who calls Piper’s jitters a butterfly, or húdié, and teaches Piper to calmly greet the sensation with “Hello, húdié. Nĭ hăo.” Why did you focus on this twosome, teaching a few words of Standard Mandarin along the way?

Soo: We’re doing two things at once, telling an immigrant story that’s intergenerational and also inter-cultural. Piper’s whole family is there, but Nǎi Nai is the one who greets her when she comes home from school. For me personally, my Nǎi Nai played music, and we bonded by playing piano together. Eventually, she would play and I would sing, and that was a common language we could speak.

I was a second-generation kid, and when I got older, I was so grateful that she wanted to instill her culture, our culture, in my everyday life, with little things like teaching me a word or writing my Chinese name on my birthday card in the Chinese characters. To me, those were not only ways to educate me on my culture and where I come from, but also a gesture of love, like a hug in a Chinese character. It’s a way to say, “I love you, I see you, I’m here for you.”

Doran: Our kids are our first audience, and most kids certainly love language. They’re always curious about things like, “How do you say that in this language?” It was important to us to have a Chinese American protagonist, as Phillipa says, in terms of representation and to feel confident in using that language, as well as for kids like my boys who don’t hear the same language at home, but whose experience is parallel [to Piper’s].

Phillipa, you’ve been [outspoken about Asian American representation]. As a young person, did you see a future for yourself as a Chinese American star?

Soo: I would find something every once in a while and cling to it. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was one of the most beautiful films of my childhood, because my brother was obsessed with the martial arts, and also because this was an Asian story. Seeing Asian characters on screen was really important to us. A lot of people of color in the arts have had a similar experience: you feel inspired by the stories being made, but you’re having to do one more step to put yourself in the identity of someone who’s not necessarily you. I chose to make that jump because I loved art and stories. Now I feel so honored to represent the Asian American community. I feel like I have this responsibility, which excites me and also feels daunting. [In Piper Chen Sings,] we want the audience to feel like they can put themselves in Piper’s shoes.

What’s next for the two of you?

Doran: We love Piper. Creating her character, her world, and the side characters was really fun. We’d love to see her grow in a second book or another medium.e. And at a minimum, we’ll continue this partnership. The collaboration was everything I could have hoped for.

Soo: Nothing official yet, but—to use the book metaphor—we are not closing this book.

Piper Chen Sings by Phillipa Soo and Maris Pasquale Doran, illus. by Qin Leng. Random House Studio, $19.99 Apr. 2 ISBN 978-0-593-56469-1