Politics & Power Quote by Kristin Chenoweth

Chenoweth is doing something canny here: praising Broadway without romanticizing it, then using that compliment as a quiet indictment of Hollywood's brand of open-mindedness. The line turns on a contrast between two entertainment capitals that both sell progress, but police different kinds of difference. Broadway, in her telling, is a place where belief is known, folded into the room, and metabolized as part of the work. Hollywood is a place where belief becomes a liability the second it threatens the industry's preferred self-image.

The specific intent feels less like a partisan complaint than a plea for conversational oxygen. She names two taboo zones - Republican politics and spirituality - that, in many creative circles, get treated as synonymous with judgment, regression, or bad PR. By singling out those topics, she signals awareness of the cultural script: the acceptable identity markers are the ones that read as cost-free solidarity. The unacceptable ones are the ones that might force colleagues to grapple with disagreement, not just diversity.

Subtext: Broadway's intimacy makes ideological variety harder to caricature. Theater culture is smaller, more relational, more dependent on mutual trust across a long rehearsal process. Hollywood, built on networks, optics, and employability, incentivizes silence; a "wrong" affiliation can be rebranded as controversy, and controversy is a business risk.

Context matters, too: Chenoweth has long been publicly Christian and has flirted with conservative identification while working in overwhelmingly liberal industries. Her quote isn't asking to be applauded for dissent; it's asking not to be treated as a problem to manage.