Broadway actress and singer Courtney Reed notes several peculiar similarities between her most famous role—that of the first Princess Jasmine in Broadway’s “Aladdin”—and her current starring role as Satine in the first touring version of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.”

For starters, both characters live in Moroccan-themed penthouses with a balcony through which their love interest arrives. And in both, Reed’s characters are posed a question: “Do you trust me?” In the Disney production, it’s Aladdin doing the asking. But in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” it’s the evil Duke of Monroth.

The answer is different, but both characters are strong and independent, Reed explains.

“I think Jasmine’s a little more openhearted than Satine is, because Jasmine was very privileged, and Satine was not,” Reed says from Los Angeles, where the production is wrapping up before moving north to San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre and BroadwaySF.

Baz Luhrmann’s hit 2001 film “Moulin Rouge!” reinvigorated the musical film genre, but it took nearly two decades for it to arrive on stage, updated with even more pop hits. This time, the story of truth, beauty, freedom and love was directed by Alex Timbers with a book by John Logan, arrangements by Justin Levine and choreography by Sonya Tayeh—all of them Tony winners. But shortly after opening in 2019, it was shuttered by the pandemic. At last year’s Tony Awards, it won 10 awards, including Best Musical.

Now it’s back both on Broadway and on its first national tour (planned before the pandemic), playing at the Orpheum Theatre from Sept. 8 to Nov. 6.

This stage adaptation also stars Conor Ryan as Christian, the young composer who falls in love with Satine in 1890s Montmartre in Paris, Austin Durant as Harold Zidler, the owner of the titular, failing Moulin Rouge cabaret, André Ward as bohemian artist Toulouse-Lautrec and Gabe Martinez as Santiago (who take Christian into their world) and David Harris as the duke, who puts the vice on Christian and Zidler to give up on Satine or lose the famed Moulin Rouge.

Reed says that like many in the Broadway community, she became a huge fan of the film, watching it repeatedly with friends and listening to the soundtrack nonstop.

“I think our community latched on to that movie and felt like we needed to create a Broadway musical out of it for years and years and years,” she says. “It has a special place in my heart for sure.”

Reed, 38, has performed since she was a child growing up in the Chicago area, with her break coming in 2001 when she was cast as a replacement actress and understudy in “Mamma Mia!” She was also a replacement and understudy on Broadway in “In The Heights,” performing numerous roles. Reed originated Jasmine even before “Aladdin” made it to Broadway.

Her performance on the production’s original cast recording earned her a Grammy nomination.

“That was that was huge for me! I had no idea that musical theater albums got to be nominated,” Reed says.

Self-deprecatingly, she explains the role of Jasmine was too small for a Tony nomination and how Jasmine is the one Disney princess with a story not based around her. But the Grammy nomination was special and unexpected.

In March, Reed and the company opened “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” in her hometown.

The adaptation keeps the plot of the film intact but updates the songbook with many newer pop standards.

“Even the ‘Moulin Rouge!’, Baz-Luhrmann-obsessive cult classic lovers are really loving the musical because, I think, what this creative team has done is sort of infuse a lot of these new songs that are very familiar to everyone,” Reed says. “We have songs by Britney Spears and Rihanna and Katy Perry and Lady Gaga—so we have so many really familiar hits. And then, of course, we have a lot of the same classics from the film, so we have ‘Come What May,’ ‘Your Song’ by Elton John … the ‘Elephant Love Medley;’ so you’re getting the best of all worlds, really.”

Two songs no longer in the script that Reed is sad to see go are “One Day I’ll Fly Away,” a 1980 song by Randy Crawford that was sung by Satine in the film; and Queen’s “The Show Must Go On,” sung by Zidler in the film.

These songs aren’t just replaced by newer ones. The story is tweaked.

“But, you know, you get ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Firework’ and all of those amazing songs—and you still get ‘Roxanne!’” Reed says.

In fact, the stage adaptation has about twice as many musical numbers as the film. Reed says she loves to listen to Ryan (Christian) sing The Police’s “Roxanne”—”Our Christian just so happens to have one of the best voices on all of Broadway,” she gushes—she loves to duet with Ryan on Elton John’s “Your Song” and film original number “Come What May.”

As for the audiences?

“‘Bad Romance,’ which is the top of Act Two, has been getting us a standing ovation mid-show, which is really cool,” Reed says. “The dancers are in these really uncomfortable poses at the end of it … are dying. But it’s worth it.”

Like Nicole Kidman in the film, Reed sings another of her highlights, Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” popularized by Marilyn Monroe.

She famously performs the song while swinging from the rafters while some other “fun stuff” happens that she doesn’t want to spoil.

“Straight out of the gate, that’s her number, and people cheer a lot when I start singing that song,” Reed says.

Younger fans will appreciate the music of bands like Walk the Moon and fun. and artists like Lorde. For fans of less-bombastic, independent music, Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity” makes an appearance.

Reed has heard from friends that audiences love to sing along with the cast, which the cast luckily can’t hear, or it might throw the actors off. But that comes with the interactive nature of the show itself.

“Zidler talks a lot with the audience; you have Christian, who sort of narrates some of the sections of the show,” she says.

Modern pop and rock songs are more fun for Reed to sing, she says, citing that pretty much everything she’s appeared in on Broadway has fit that mold, from “Mamma Mia!” (Abba) to “In the Heights” to “Aladdin,” which have a lot of pop sensibility.

In 2020, she starred in the off-Broadway “Cambodian Rock Band,” about the Khmer Rouge genocide. Reed played both a Cambodian-American who returned to her father’s home country to prosecute a war criminal, learning her father’s story along the way—and the singer of the titular ‘70s ill-fated band, performing traditional songs as well as songs written by the very real rock band Dengue Fever.

“I sang in Cambodian, but it was an actual rock band,” she says. “Even though I don’t have a super crazy rock voice, I’ve always gravitated toward pop music. I love it so much.”

Reed has gotten to check a lot of bucket list items off her list, from her first principal role on “In the Heights,” learning to lead a company from Lin Manuel Miranda and actors Javier Muñoz and Corbin Bleu, to being part of an original Broadway cast and recording the original cast recording with “Aladdin.”

“But as far as meaty roles, this ranks as the number one. Because [Satine is] really a true leading lady,” Reed says. “She drives the show. She gets to go through a large range of emotion. I get to do the comedy stuff that I really love to do, I get to do the drama that I love to do, I get to sing my favorite style of music. As an actress, it’s an absolute dream role.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.