Megan Hilty reveals Meryl Streep's hilarious Death Becomes Her note: 'Break a leg, or I'll break it for you'

When Meryl Streep tells you to break a leg, you go ahead and make that a compound fracture.

Megan Hilty has revealed the hilarious note Streep recently sent along with some flowers before Hilty took the stage as Madeline Ashton in Death Becomes Her, the Broadway adaptation of Streep's hit 1992 film. As captured in an Instagram post Thursday, the note said, "Break a leg, or I'll break it for you. With dried and undying love and respect, Meryl."

In just two lines, Streep (who played Madeline in the movie) showed why she's lionized as the most distinguished American actress of her generation. There's the "break it for you" joke, playing on the common felicitation for stage actors and the story's characters literally breaking each others legs; the "undying respect," a nod to the same characters' pursuit of eternal youth; and the dried flowers, a grim reminder of how far that pursuit actually gets them.

In her caption, Hilty wrote simply, "I'm dead."

Needless to say, she has big shoes to fill. But the Tony-winning actress, whose first Broadway credit was as stand-in for Kristin Chenoweth during Wicked's premiere run, is more than prepared for the challenge.

Death Becomes Her tells the darkly comic story of a love triangle between aging actress Madeline, small-time writer Helen Sharp (Jennifer Simard on Broadway, Goldie Hawn in the film), and plastic surgeon Ashton (Christopher Sieber, Bruce Willis). A vengeful rivalry erupts between Madeline and Helen, and after the introduction of an immortalizing elixir, no blow is too brutal to deliver.

This is Death Becomes Her's first run as a Broadway production, one Entertainment Weekly called "bigger and bawdier" than the movie "at every turn."

Hilty already had some fun with Streep before stepping into the role the Oscar-winning actress made famous. Back in October, early theatergoers were delighted to discover an Easter egg Hilty had planted in the playbill.

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"Megan Hilty (Madeline Ashton) has been lauded as 'the best actress of her generation,'" her bio on the cast page reads. "The countless accolades for her career include 9 Golden Globe Awards and 21 Oscar nominations, winning three for Kramer Vs. Kramer (1979), Sophie’s Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady (2011)."

The bio is a cheeky reproduction of Streep's, and another play on Death Becomes Her's themes of female jealousy, rivalry, and replacement.

EW has reached out to reps for Streep.

Death Becomes Her is playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater through May 25, 2025.