There’s nothing strange and usual about the success that Karis Oka is now enjoying in one of the most coveted roles in musical theatre. Starring in the Australian production of stage hit Beetlejuice the Musical, she isn’t the first actor to step into Lydia Deetz’s combat boots in the eight-time Tony Award-nominated show.
But after roles in SIX the Musical, Fangirls and Ride the Cyclone, plus on-screen Erotic Stories, Population 11, Strife and The Deb, playing a goth teen who moves into a newly haunted house feels like a part that Oka was born for.
She has now spent a year meeting the Maitlands, the freshly deceased couple who aren’t ready to move on from their earthly home. Since May 2025, when the Eddie Perfect-penned Beetlejuice the Musical made its Australian debut in Melbourne, six years after premiering on Broadway, Oka’s been palling around with the show’s eponymous and ever-chaotic ghost-with-the-most, too, including during international tours to Singapore and Abu Dhabi.
Next stop: Beetlejuice’s Brisbane season from June, then stints in Perth from August, Adelaide from October and Sydney from November.
Karis Oka on Beetlejuice the Musical – quick links
Dancing with the dark
That fated air, that sense that Oka is perfect for her leading role as a death-obsessed high schooler, is no mere audience invention or projection, even if Beetlejuice is a musical and Lydia a character that theatregoers frequently see themselves in.
A confessed fan Tim Burton’s cult-favourite 1988 film long before joining its theatre iteration, Oka tells ArtsHub she thinks that ‘some things just speak to people more than others’. Beetlejuice has been talking to her for years.
‘I’ve always loved the dark and macabre,’ Oka says. Like devotees of Beetlejuice on the screen for nearing four decades – during which time the film spawned an animated TV series that ran for two seasons, as well as Burton’s 2024 big-screen sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – she also appreciates the warmth and catharsis of this horror-comedy franchise, and that those elements pair impeccably with its musings on mortality.
‘I do always say how much I love Tim Burton stuff, but I think it’s because that world really balances quite a darkness with a lot of innocence and silliness as well. I know people who are like “oh my god, I can’t watch them, they’re creepy” or “they give me the heebie-jeebies” but I’ve definitely always found a lot of comfort in it.’
Still, Oka knows that starring in a musical that not only adapts a cherished movie but also grapples with weighty matters, such as dying, grief, humanity’s transience and finding meaning in life’s mess and distress, is far from a simple task.
‘I love it,’ she says, an unsurprising admission given that Oka describes herself as ‘someone that always thinks about death a lot. I’m just one of those people.’
She also names themes of home, outsider tropes, found families and the paranormal as ‘truly my favourite types of things that art can be about, and they’re all in this musical’.
That Beetlejuice the Musical is among a growing cohort of projects doing something that is not always a given, namely taking teenage girls and their obsessions seriously, is perhaps more of a ‘chicken or egg’ question, Oka says. The same focus keeps recurring on her resume, and was a hallmark of both Fangirls and The Deb.
‘I am that girl. I have been ever since I was a teenager. I was a freaky fan, I guess,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if I was drawn to it because I was it, or if it was drawn to me because I was it.’
What do a bio-exorcist and a teenage girl have in common?
Both as a fan and a performer, Beetlejuice the Musical is a dream role for Oka, but not just because it reflects her own specific interests. Even more vital is the fact that the show, in its entertaining, song-filled, monochrome-hued way – manic sometimes as well, matching its mischievous namesake’s energy – confronts death and mortality in a big-name, high-profile production.
‘Some people really don’t like to think about it and fair enough,’ she says. ‘But whether you want to think about it or not, it happens to you and it happens to everyone around you, and it’s really the thing everyone has in common. And it’s therefore important to talk about, especially in a western culture. We’re not very good at talking about it or addressing it.’
She adds, ‘For it to be in a commercial musical, I feel like it’s like when you give a dog their tablets, but it’s wrapped up in a piece of ham. That’s the comedy in the world of Beetlejuice.’
To borrow from another adored musical with screen and stage history, Beetlejuice understands how a spoonful of sugar can help its darkness go down, then. Oka is front and centre in that task. Perfect’s take on the narrative, which draws on a book by Gutenberg! The Musical!’s Scott Brown and Anthony King, shines the spotlight more firmly on Lydia than Burton’s movie.
In the process, in one of its nods to the cartoon that ran from 1989 to 1991, Beetlejuice the Musical also places greater emphasis on the similarities between its troublemaker bio-exorcist and the teen mourning her mother.
‘They are like two sides of the same coin,’ Oka explains. ‘They manifest each other in what they want.’
‘They both just want to be seen, but in completely different ways. He’s like, “I’m a hundreds-and-hundreds-year-old demon” and she’s a girl going through grief – and they just happen to be the perfect pair.’
Pushing Lydia more to the fore is also a smart way of expanding the musical’s appeal, Oka notes, broadening the audience.
‘I’ve spoken to a lot of Beetlejuice fans that were fans of the movie before I was alive. So there’s a nostalgia-based side of the fandom. But then I think having Lydia [as a lead], whether it was intentional or not, really brought in a younger demographic – and they truly are the people that kept the musical alive in things like Covid lockdowns.
‘It had a huge resurgence online with kids on TikTok and stuff like that. And I think that’s because they really loved that it was about Lydia.’
Taking on an iconic character – and an industry’s lack of diversity
The global response to Lydia’s main song Dead Mom, after Oka’s rendition was posted on YouTube last year, demonstrates that hearty online love. It wasn’t until that moment, in fact, that she began to fully realise that she is now a custodian of an iconic character that audiences have seen themselves in for decades – and that she’s now the person that theatregoers are hopefully having the same experience with.
‘I remember being like, oh, it’s online – it’s online in the way that a lot of other Lydias are online,’ she recalls. ‘And I was like oh, I’m really in this. Because it feels like being in Australia, sometimes you’re not necessarily in the heart of something. So it’s been really grounding and humbling and precious to me.’
Not even half a decade has passed since Oka first made her professional stage debut in regal sensation SIX the Musical. When she was cast as a swing in the touring show, she hadn’t yet officially graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts. Back then, Oka was ‘just looking only one step ahead of me,’ she says, with full awareness of her luck.
‘There was absolutely a world in which I didn’t get into university the year that I did. Even one year difference meant I wouldn’t have been able to audition for SIX, which meant I wouldn’t have had the butterfly effect [that led to Beetlejuice],’ Oka muses.
‘I work hard, but I do think that just [with] the timing of everything, I’ve been really, really blessed. And I know it’s not common for people to have that sort of trajectory, especially so soon after studying.’
Oka equally acknowledges timing as having a hand in her success as a Japanese-Australian performer when the nation’s arts scene hasn’t historically been known for its diversity. ‘I definitely feel that I have been very fortunate to enter the industry when I did. Even a few years earlier would have been a completely different story.’
She adds, ‘We’re very slowly getting more open to the idea that all different types of people can play all different types of roles. But it is too slow, I think, that that’s happening. And the people in charge of big, big commercial musicals, [the ones] that set the temperature and it trickles down, you just want them to be open-minded to it. That’s my hope, at least.’
What does it mean to Oka to be taking on prominent parts, including as Lydia in Beetlejuice the Musical, and making headway for diversity and representation in Australian theatre as a result?
‘I honestly have such a to-and-fro relationship with it because obviously, I’m honoured and it is a huge privilege, and I very much understand what I represent in the grand scheme of things,’ she says. ‘But I also almost feel like I went in there and auditioned, but it was a casting director who chose me. It’s on the casting team – it’s not like no-one’s going in and auditioning. It’s up to casting teams to make that choice. So I’m just forever grateful for anyone that’s ever wanted to pick me for anything.’
’It’s also just an interesting thing, having these high-profile jobs, and you do kind of automatically become the spokesperson for any identity marker, basically, just because people are seeing you,’ Oka says.
‘But I don’t think every day about those things. And then when it’s brought to me, I’m like “right, yes, that is another huge facet of the role that I play in this, not just in the show, but the industry”. So it’s a lot to hold, but I’m happy to hold it.’
