Megan Thee Stallion On Leaving 'Moulin Rouge' Early: "I Didn't Want to Let Anyone Down"
“I don’t think I was aware of how much I was going to be putting my body through."
Megan Thee Stallion was a week into her run as Zidler in Moulin Rouge on Broadway when she was rushed to the hospital.
"I didn’t want to let anyone down," the rapper tells Brittany Spanos for Marie Claire's September 2026 Legends Issue.
But Megan was overextending herself: In addition to performing in eight shows a week, she was still working on her music career. In hindsight, she says, she wasn't eating properly, nor drinking enough water.
"She was burning the candle at both ends," her castmate and friend Kelsie Watts tells Marie Claire. "If she wasn’t in rehearsals, then she was going to work on her album, or she was going to do press or a photo shoot. A lot of people don’t realize, eight shows a week is just different. Until you do it, you can’t describe it, but it’s really freaking hard, and I think she was just exhausted."
Describing the incident that led to her being rushed from the theater to the hospital, the rapper says, "I thought I was having a stroke. I wasn’t getting any oxygen to my brain, so my hands had froze. My face had froze. I was trying to tell everybody that I don’t think I’m okay. They only thought I was dehydrated."
Of her mindset before Moulin Rouge started, the "Hot Girl Summer" singer says, "I don’t think I was aware of how much I was going to be putting my body through."
When she got to the hospital, she was told she was suffering from exhaustion and having a panic attack. She returned to the stage two days afterwards, cut her schedule down to seven shows a week, and stopped doing so much for her music on top of the show.
These days, the star is doing her best to take good care of herself. "I’m definitely trying to stay more hydrated and be more calm," she says.
