2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 19 A remarkably large class of Coloradans excelled in 2025 on screens large and small, and on stages near and far Justine Lupe started to get famous around 2018 because she was versatile, she was deeply relatable, she was quirky, and she was com pletely authentic – on camera and in life. All those qualities were fully evident Thursday morning when Lupe joined the theater students at her old high-school stomping grounds – Denver School of the Arts – for an hour of silly and serious straight talk about the vagaries of high school and the life that might await these particular students who would like nothing better than to one day have the opportunity to play the kind of roles Lupe has of late fully owned and operated. Notably: She played Willa Ferreyra in HBO’s hit series “Succession,” a role creators expanded into a major character only after realizing they had discovered lightning in a bottle when they found Lupe. And now Morgan, the messy, advice-doling sister of Kristen Bell’s Joanne in Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This.” Lupe reminded these students of the practical things you can’t tell aspiring actors enough: The business is hard. It’s capricious and unfair. You have to really want this life. And if you are lucky enough to get it, she told them, you better make sure it doesn’t become your whole life. So … knit. Get a cat. Have babies, if that’s your thing. Just remember to have a life. She also told them that, yes, high school is, was and always will be hard. It was for her. There were times when she wanted out of DSA altogether. And yet, she told me later, her time at DSA was foundational in a journey that was built one unique step after the other. DSA didn’t get Lupe her jobs on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” or “Succession.” But DSA (Class of 2007) begets The Juilliard School (2011) begets a character-defining episode of Shameless” (2013). The one where she plays an adult female pedophile who has a sexual encounter with an eighth-grader. (It’s a comedy!) Justine Lupe speaks to students at her former high school, Denver School of the Arts, during a visit on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (Tom Hellauer/Denver Gazette) One student tells Lupe she sees a clip from that episode at least once a month on Tik-Tok. Lupe gives her a dose of reality: “Full disclosure: I had a full-on #MeToo moment making that show,” she said. “Someone tried to get me to go topless on that episode, and I didn’t want to do it, and I said no. And so, they brought on one person after another to try to convince me to do it.” This was really early on in Lupe’s career. She was only 23. It was a one-episode, one-and-done job. There would be no long-term payoff for just going along. This was not how she wanted to start her career. Even one of the series regulars tried to, pardon the pun, shame her into doing it. And when Lupe and her agent said, “Absolutely not,” voila: They backed down. “And once we got past that part, it was actually a totally fine experience.” DSA Director of Theatre Shawn Hann knows a teachable moment when she sees it. “I want to point out the bravery of that,” she told her students. “The bravery of standing up for yourself and saying no, when there was so much on the line. But that’s who you are. That’s amazing, especially at that age.” Justine Lupe speaks to students at her former high school, Denver School of the Arts, during a visit on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (Tom Hellauer/Denver Gazette) Lupe’s theater training did not actually begin when she was accepted into DSA for the sixth grade. First came the living-room skits with her brothers. The clowning classes with Moss Kaplan at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts when she was 6. Performing in Shakespeare plays by Grade 4 at Bromwell Elementary. The countless plays musicals at the JCC Denver through the Denver Children’s Theatre. The summer-camp classes that she took at the DCPA as a kid, and returned there teach as a high-schooler. The main theater at DSA bears the name of Lupe’s grandmother. The legendary Kay Schomp was a Denver Board of Education member who championed the founding of DSA as an arts-magnet school within Denver Public Schools. It’s the auditorium where Lupe played Gwendolyn in “The Importance of Being Earnest” (I was obsessed with it,” she said”) and Nora in “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” Given all that came before DSA and all that has taken place since, leading to today, I asked her: How much of an impact did this school have on the life she is living today? Justine Lupe speaks to students at her former high school, Denver School of the Arts, during a visit on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (Tom Hellauer/Denver Gazette) “I think that every single piece of this had to go the way that it went for me to get to this place. I really do believe that,” she said. “It’s like a ‘Sliding Doors’ kind of thing. I think that I had to start out in the genesis stage of doing those little plays and skits with my brothers in order to first understand that I was curious. And then I had to go to the JCC. And I had to do those plays at the elementary school every summer. That’s what led me to realizing, ‘Oh, I want to audition for DSA. TV star Justine Lupe at Denver School of the Arts on Dec. 18, 2025. (John Moore, Denver Gazette) “And then there was the confidence that I got from going to school for theater here for seven years. That taught me about going through the process of auditioning, and even knowing what a conservatory was. All of that was from DSA. All of these things led me to the next thing. So I think it’s of great importance that I went here.” All of those things certainly led to a banger of a 2025 (just watch her hilarious appearances on talk shows like Jimmy Kimmel and Kelly Clarkson)  – and she was not alone. An uncommon number of actors hailing from Colorado accomplished remarkable things on screens large and small and stages from here to Broadway in 2025. Justine Lupe speaks to students at her former high school, Denver School of the Arts, during a visit on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (Tom Hellauer/Denver Gazette) For both the pride they engender back home, and for the example they show of the power and fundamental need for arts education in the formative years of artists, they are all today’s collective recipients of the 2025 Denver Gazette True West Award, an effort to simply tell 30 positive stories from the Colorado theater year daily in December: Aurora’s Erik C. Peterson, left, during his three-year run in Broadway’s ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. (Matthew Murphy) • In November, Erik C. Peterson, a 2018 graduate of Grandview High School in Aurora, completed a three-year run on Broadway as Scorpius Malfoy in the runaway hit “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” (Scorpius is the pure-blood British wizard son of Harry’s long-time nemesis, Draco Malfoy.) A national touring version of the show is coming to Denver from May 30-June 21. (Info: denvercenter.org) “I’m filled with gratitude for my three years as Scorpius and the personal and professional learning experience that working in the Broadway company was,” Peterson said. “The show is a magical spectacle, but it also contains a lot of heart. I’ll be thrilled for Denver audiences to experience the magic when they see my talented friends in the touring cast this spring at the DCPA. As for me, the Muggle world is treating me well, and I look forward to new projects to come.” • Regis High School (1981) graduate John Carroll Lynch, who has made appearances in more than 70 movies and 40 TV series, had another incredible year. He played a major cop role in the Prime streaming series “Ballard,” a small but pivotal role in the indie film “Sorry, Baby,” and closed the year on a personal high when he made his Broadway debut playing Creon in “Oedipus” in October. This is Lynch’s first stage play in 19 years. The play, which won the Olivier Award as best London revival before transferring across the pond, runs through Feb. 8 at Studio 54. Screenwriter Nora Garrett, a 2009 graduate of Denver School of the Arts, on the set of ‘After the Hunt. YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/AMAZON MGM STUDIOS • Nora Garrett (Denver School the Arts, 2009) was the screenwriter, executive producer and actor in the lightning-rod Julia Roberts film “After the Hunt,” which also features Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny and Ayo Edebiri. It’s a psychological thriller that follows a college professor (Roberts) caught in between a sexual-abuse accusation involving one of her students (Edebiri, of “The Bear”), and a colleague (Garfield, of the spiderverse). Roberts has said the reason the film was able to assemble such an all-star cast is because Garrett wrote characters worthy of an all-star cast. • Tony Award-winning actor Annaleigh Ashford (who graduated from Wheat Ridge High School at age 16 in 2002) starred in “Happy Face,” a big-buzz drama about the real-life young woman who discovered in high school that her father was a serial killer who strangled at least eight women between 1990-95. (It’s streaming on Paramount Plus.) “What’s most unique about ‘Happy Face’ is that while, yes, it’s a crime show, it’s told from the perspective of a woman who is also a family member,” Ashford said. “So often, we watch these crime shows from the serial killer’s perspective or the detective’s perspective. It’s usually the ‘male gaze.’ This is told from the ‘female gaze.’ It also is a show about violence with no violence.” Ashford is also now co-starring in a new NBC cheerleading comedy called “Stumble.” In June, she came home to headline a $1,000-per-ticket concert that raised about $1 million for Denver Center theater and education programs. She also delivered the commencement address at Marymount Manhattan College. • Melissa Benoist (Arapahoe High School, 2007) played a recovering addict who’s fighting to regain the respect of her parents and  resentful teenage son in the Kevin Williamson film “The Waterfront” (streaming on Netflix). • Tony Award winner Gabriel Ebert (Denver School of the Arts, 2005) received his second Tony nomination for his work in the Broadway play “John Proctor is the Villain.” Jenna Bainbridge in 2024 outside of ‘Suffs’ on Broadway. She’s now in ‘Wicked.’ (Paul Behrhorst) • Jenna Bainbridge (Castle View High School, 2010, and the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, 2014) made more Broadway history in March when she joined the cast of “Wicked” as Nessarose, marking the first time the role of Elphaba’s wheelchair-using sister has been played by an authentic wheelchair-using actor on Broadway. • Emma Maisel (Denver School of the Arts, 2015) just appeared in the film ‘Please Don’t Feed the Children,’ directed by Steven Spielberg’s daughter, Destry. Gene Gillette heading into work last March to perform in ‘Macbeth’ on Broadway with a couple of rather famous movie stars: Denzel Washington and Jjae Gyllenhaal. (Courtesy Gene Gillette) • Evergreen native Gene Gillette played Gratiano (Desdemona’s uncle) in the high-profile Broadway revival of “Othello” that starred Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal at the Barrymore Theatre. “This was everything I’ve dreamed of, trained for and worked toward since I first stepped on that stage at Arapahoe Community College 31 years ago in a production of ‘Macbeth’ and I fell in love with Shakespeare,” he said. • Tony Award nominee Beth Malone (Douglas County High School, 1987) is preparing to open the world premiere of “Starstruck,” the new musical comedy she’s co-written with Mary Ann Stratton and Emily Saliers (of the Indigo Girls). It runs Feb. 19-March 1 at the Bucks County Playhouses in New Hope, Pa. It’s set in a tiny Idaho mountain town where a hotshot NPR podcaster has come to cover a local conflict about a bar’s neon sign causing disharmony with the joys of a dark rural sky. • Jamie Ann Romero (Chatfield High School and University of Northern Colorado) is appearing in the off-Broadway play “This World of Tomorrow,” starring (drum roll) Tom Hanks and Kelli O’Hara. It’s the story of a disenchanted scientist from the future who travels back in time to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which revives his dream of what the future could be. It’s based on Hanks’ own short stories. Romero plays two characters: “ELMA” (External Learning Machine Associate) and Sylvia. It runs through Dec. 21 at The Shed. • Barton Cowperthwaite (Denver School the Arts, 2010) completed his one-year contract with the Tony Award-winning Best Musical “The Outsiders” and is now appearing in the off-Broadway musical “Gotta Dance” at New York’s York Theatre through Dec. 28. • Oscar Whitney Jr. (Overland High School, 2017, and University of Northern Colorado, 2021) has been an ensemble member in the Alicia Keys Broadway musical “Hell’s Kitchen” since it opened in April 2024. • Denver School of the Arts graduate Max Posner (2007) is a playwright whose newest play ‘Hanukkah Spectacular,’ developed in partnership with Lincoln Center Theater, is described as “a really incredible play about modern Jewish identity.” He developed it while finishing a one-year commissioned playwriting residency in Sun Valley, Idaho. • Tony Award nominee Jeremy Shamos (Colorado Academy, 1988), whose recent big-buzz TV credits have included “Only Murders in the Building” (he was Meryl Streep’s son), “The Gilded Age” and “Better Call Saul,” this performed in a summer staging of “What the Constitution Means to Me” alongside his wife Nina Hellman at the new Nantucket (Mass.) Performing Arts Center. • Ryan Fitzgerald (Denver School the the Arts, 2006) just came through Denver in the national touring production of “Shucked.” • Jake Brasch (Denver School of the Arts, 2010) wrote the Denver Center Theatre Company world-premiere play ‘The Reservoir,’ which bows at Off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theater Company in February. • Regan Linton (Denver East, 2000) took part in a workshop production of “Titus Andronicus” at New York’s Public Theatre (think birthplace of “Hamilton”) with other disabled artists. And in October, she starred in the world premiere of her very own play called “​​FDR’s Very Happy Hour” at the vaunted Actors Theatre of Louisville. As FDR! Linton has been invited to perform the play next month as part of an important national conference called APAP|NYC, an annual gathering in New York City that draws agents and presenters looking to book promising new shows. Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations. More True West Awards coverage • Our original report on the Air Force’s ‘Legally Blonde’ • 2025 True West Awards, Day 1: Matt Zambrano • Day 2: Rattlebrain is tying up ‘Santa’s Big Red Sack’ • Day 3: Mission Possible: Phamaly alumni make national impact • Day 4: Jeff Campbell invites you to join him on the dark side • Day 5: Cleo Parker Robinson is flying high at 77 • Day 6: Mirror images: Leslie O’Carroll and Olivia Wilson • Day 7: Philip Sneed will exit Arvada Center on a high • Day 8: Ed Reinhardt’s magic stage run ends after 27 years • Day 9: Costume Designer Nikki Harrison • Day 10: DU’s tech interns getting the job done • Day 11: Husbands, wives keep home fire burning • Day 12: Denver School of the Arts’ Drama Dash • Day 13: Theater as a powerful response to violence • Day 14: Elitch Theatre no longer a ghost town • Day 15: A double play for playwright Luke Sorge • Day 16: ‘Legally Blonde’ at the Air Force Academy? Elle, yes! • Day 17: Kelly Van Oosbree is the cat in the hats • Day 18: Phamaly presents a ‘Pericles’ for the neurodivergent ...read more read less