Alaskan Emma Broyles was crowned Miss America on Thursday night (12-16-21). She’s the first Miss Alaska and the first Korean American to win the title in the organization’s 100-year history.
20-year-old Broyles hails from Anchorage– she graduated from Service High School. According to the Miss America organization, she’s a junior at Arizona State University, studying biomedical studies and minoring in voice performance.
And perhaps you’ve heard her voice before. Sitkans may remember the 2018 Sitka Fine Arts Camp production of Legally Blonde the Musical– If you caught the show, you saw Broyles in the lead role of Elle Woods.
Here’s Broyles on the Morning Interview speaking with host Tina Moore about what it took to prepare for the role in a time crunch.
Moore- So how is this camp different from other times that you’ve done theater?
Broyles: This is way more, I think, concentrated, just because we arrive here and it’s all in two weeks. We learn an entire two hour show in two weeks and get to perform it. Usually back at home when we do shows, we would take about two to three months. It’s really interesting to do a show in two weeks.
For Miss America, Broyles cut that time down by half. Contestants spend just one week participating in a variety of activities leading up to the live show. In her 2018 interview, Broyles goes on to discuss what drove her character, early-2000s feminist icon Elle Woods.
Broyles: She is fierce. She spends her entire time at Harvard being put down by the other law students, telling her that she’s not good enough, that she didn’t deserve to be here. And then she goes and shows them. She proves them wrong. She tells them, ‘Hey I can be the president of Delta Nu Sorority, but I can also be smart and show these people what I can do.’
In addition to winning the crown, Broyles won a $100,000 scholarship and a full-time job for the next year representing the Miss America Organization around the world.
