Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney Heads to Broadway’s ‘Six’ as Anne Boleyn

The Moment

Dylan Mulvaney is trading beer cans for a beheaded queen.

The 29-year-old transgender influencer and performer – whose 2023 Bud Light tie-in became ground zero for a conservative boycott – has been cast as Anne Boleyn in the hit Broadway musical Six, starting February 16. According to the show’s official social media announcement, Mulvaney will join the production’s latest Broadway cast rotation as the second wife of Henry VIII.

Six reimagines the king’s six wives as a pop girl group, each belting her own version of history. The musical has always branded itself as a punchy, female-centered spin on “his”tory, loaded with glitter, eyeliner, and 21st-century girl power.

The casting instantly lit up the internet, because of course it did. Mulvaney is not just joining any Broadway show; she’s walking straight into a production marketed for years as an all-female empowerment fest – and doing it with the Bud Light saga still clinging to her like stage glitter.

The Take

I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: this was never just about beer, and it’s not just about Broadway now.

For supporters, Mulvaney landing Anne Boleyn is exactly what an inclusive theater world should look like: a successful trans woman playing a complicated, historically polarizing woman in a show that’s literally about reclaiming women’s stories. It’s almost too on the nose – casting that feels like it was assembled in a grad-school seminar on gender and power.

For critics, this is going to be framed as another frontline in the culture war: a show long sold as an “all-female” girl-group fantasy now starring a trans woman whose face was plastered all over the Bud Light controversy they still fume about. Expect a lot of loud people pretending to care deeply about Tudor history all of a sudden.

The reality sits somewhere far less dramatic. Mulvaney is, first and foremost, a working performer. Before the beer cans and political think pieces, she was onstage doing cabaret, comedy, and theater. She’s already carried an off-Broadway solo show, The Least Problematic Woman in the World. Landing a big commercial musical is what ambitious stage performers try to do. That’s the job.

The bigger story is how we keep using the same woman – first a trans woman, now Anne Boleyn – as a projection screen for everyone’s anxieties. A brand puts her face on a can and suddenly she has allegedly “taken down” a beer empire. A Broadway show hires her, and she becomes proof that civilization is either collapsing or evolving, depending on which Facebook group you’re in.

If the Bud Light fallout was the dress rehearsal, this feels like the Broadway opening of the same argument: Whose stories count as “women’s stories,” and who gets to stand in that spotlight? Six has always been about wives stepping out from the shadow of a powerful man. Now, the casting itself pushes the conversation about which women are allowed to tell which stories.

My read: the hype will be louder than the reality. Within a week of previews, most theatergoers will be talking about whether she can belt Boleyn’s songs, not what her passport says. Broadway has quietly been ahead of the rest of the country on nontraditional casting for years; the internet is just catching up – noisily.

Receipts

Confirmed

• The official Six Broadway social accounts announced that Dylan Mulvaney will join the Broadway cast as Anne Boleyn beginning February 16, using the caption “Losing our heads to introduce your newest Anne Boleyn… Show some royal love to Queen Dylan Mulvaney.”
• Mulvaney is 29 and first gained major visibility with her viral TikTok series Days of Girlhood, documenting her gender transition and building a large following across platforms.
• In 2023, Mulvaney partnered with Bud Light on a small social media promotion; researchers at Harvard Business School later described the resulting boycott as one of the biggest in recent American consumer history.
• Mulvaney has prior stage experience, including cabaret performances and the off-Broadway solo show The Least Problematic Woman in the World.
• In later TV interviews, including a daytime appearance in 2025, she said she took the Bud Light partnership casually, adding that the backlash did not change how she views herself: “I’m a woman no matter what my passport says,” responding to policy changes on gender markers.

Dylan Mulvaney and Abigail Barlow to join Six on Broadway https://t.co/HmYabglz0u pic.twitter.com/HhTvJJlUZy

— WhatsOnStage (@WhatsOnStage) January 16, 2026

Unverified / Framing

• The idea that Mulvaney single-handedly “took down” Bud Light is a political talking point, not a proven fact. Sales declines and brand reputational hits are documented, but multiple business and cultural factors were involved.
• How audiences will respond to her Anne Boleyn casting beyond social media outrage cycles remains to be seen; early reactions online are mixed and still unfolding.

Backstory (For Casual Readers)

If you only half-followed the beer drama: in 2023, Bud Light sent Mulvaney some custom cans to celebrate her “day 365 of girlhood” milestone. She posted a light, jokey video. Conservative commentators pounced, calling for a boycott. Some bars reported slower Bud Light sales; memes, hearings, and angry rants followed. Executives shuffled, advertising was tweaked, and Mulvaney said she felt abandoned and unsafe amid the backlash.

Through it all, she kept working as a performer and digital creator. While cable panels argued over her existence, she was doing what many New York performers do: writing, auditioning, and building a live show – the kind of grind that rarely trends, but pays the bills.

What’s Next

On a practical level, the next big moment is obvious: Mulvaney’s first performance as Anne Boleyn in mid-February. Expect security to be tight, at least early in the run, and for the theater door to become a magnet for both fans and protesters who’d love to turn a stage door into a backdrop for their favorite talking points.

I’ll be watching for three things:

• The performance itself. Can she handle the vocal and comedic gymnastics of Boleyn’s songs live, eight shows a week? Theater people are ruthless but fair: if she’s good, word of mouth will say so.
• The company’s stance. The producers of Six have built a brand around girl power and historical reclamation. Do they publicly lean into this casting as part of that mission, or keep it low-key and let the work speak?
• The audience mix. Will this become a must-see event for Mulvaney’s online fans and LGBTQ+ theatergoers, or will the majority of ticket buyers simply treat it like any other hot Broadway ticket?

The culture-war noise will flare, then fade, as it always does. The longer story is whether Mulvaney can transition – no pun intended – from “political football” back to “working actress” in the public imagination. Landing Anne Boleyn is a strong start. Staying there, night after night, comes down to something very old-fashioned and very uncontroversial:

Can she nail the role?

Sources: Official social media announcement from the Broadway production of Six (January 2026); televised interviews with Dylan Mulvaney on daytime talk programs including The View and CBS Mornings (2025); Harvard Business School research on the Bud Light boycott (2023).

Your turn: Would you buy a ticket to see Dylan Mulvaney as Anne Boleyn, or does the casting make you more likely to sit this one out?