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From Paralympian to Broadway Star, Katy Sullivan Is Making History: 'All I've Ever Wanted to Do'

Michael Gioia
·4-min read
GUADALAJARA, MEXICO - NOVEMBER 16: Katy Sullivan of USA competes in the Women's 100m T42 during Day 4 of the 2011 Para Pan American Games at Telmex Stadium on November 16, 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Photo by Gerardo Zavala/LatinContent via Getty Images); Jeremy Daniel
GUADALAJARA, MEXICO - NOVEMBER 16: Katy Sullivan of USA competes in the Women's 100m T42 during Day 4 of the 2011 Para Pan American Games at Telmex Stadium on November 16, 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Photo by Gerardo Zavala/LatinContent via Getty Images); Jeremy Daniel

Gerardo Zavala/Getty; Jeremy Daniel

Katy Sullivan made history this week when Martyna Majok's play Cost of Living opened on Broadway.

Sullivan — who was born without both of her lower legs — became the first actress who is an amputee to perform on the Main Stem, according to the production.

"One side of it is like: Wow, that's incredible and amazing," she tells PEOPLE. "And on the other side of it, it's like: It's 2022; what is happening? Why has this not been a thing before?"

Sullivan always wanted to be an actress. Growing up in Alabama, she attended a private school and realized she was different from her peers as a teenager in high school. Still, she was undeterred after seeing her first Broadway show, The Phantom of the Opera, at 17 years old.

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Katy Sullivan solo shots
Katy Sullivan solo shots

Dirty Sugar Photography

"I left the theater sobbing because I just wanted to do that so badly," she explains. However, she adds, "I had no one to point to and say, 'That person did it, so I can.' "

Making her Broadway debut in Cost of Living, which opened Monday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, feels "precious," she says. It's a story she can relate to and a role she created from its beginnings at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2016.

"If you look at any marginalized group in the entertainment industry, at some point they start to say, 'Can we please tell our own stories? Can you please stop putting an able-bodied person in a wheelchair and then giving them an Oscar?' " she asks.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sullivan plays Ani, who — after suffering an undisclosed accident — loses both her lower legs and has no feeling in her arms. She stars in the limited Broadway engagement through the end of the month.

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Cost of Living
Cost of Living

Julieta Cervantes

"It's all I've ever wanted to do," she says to PEOPLE of becoming a performer. "I'm just incredibly grateful to have been born to a set of parents who didn't see my physical circumstances."

Being a performer who is also a bilateral above-knee amputee has come with its own set of challenges. "[As] a performer with a disability, there were sections of time where I would get one audition in an entire year," she explains. "And then there's so much pressure put on that one thing."

Though Sullivan had done television work — appearing on My Name is Earl and Last Man Standing, among others — there was a period of time when her acting career was "quiet," she says.

So she hit the ground running… literally.

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L-R; Australia's Kelly Cartwright, Germany's Vanessa Low, and USA's Katy Sullivan go through their different starting techniques prior to the start of the women's 100m T42 at the Olympic stadium, London (Photo by EMPICS Sport - PA Images via Getty Images)
L-R; Australia's Kelly Cartwright, Germany's Vanessa Low, and USA's Katy Sullivan go through their different starting techniques prior to the start of the women's 100m T42 at the Olympic stadium, London (Photo by EMPICS Sport - PA Images via Getty Images)

EMPICS Sport/PA/Getty

"I was handed a pair of running blades, and I was like, 'You know what, for fitness and exercise, why not?' I had never run before, and I was 25 years old. And it just so happened that I was quick, and I was like, 'Let's just see where this goes,' " she recalls. "Ridiculously, it went to the Olympics."

Sullivan was among the first bilateral above-knee amputees to compete in the Paralympics in ambulatory track when she ran in the London 2012 Paralympic Games. She is a four-time U.S. Champion in the 100m and record-setting runner.

"Calling myself an athlete was a really hard word to put into my mouth because I didn't grow up that way. That's not how I sort of saw myself," she admits.

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She looks at theater and sports as very "similar" fields. "It's live, it's in the moment. There are costumes and a setting and lights and other characters, and it's this performance," she says. "You have to show up, and you have to perform. So it was this kind of beautiful, random, exciting, humbling chapter in my life."

This new chapter of making her Broadway debut has also been "humbling," she says, and one she does not take lightly.

"More than anything, it feels like a responsibility in some ways to people to be able to point to and say, 'Oh, this is possible,' " she tells PEOPLE. "This is something that can be done."

Cost of Living plays Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through Oct. 30.