I’ve also wondered about that. How big was her YouTube channel when she got Les Mis? She was what 19, 20 when she got Eponine and it was like her 2nd audition with her agent. Without her name and YouTube would she really have gotten that far, that quickly? I always thought she wasn’t a conventional Eponine. Not to bash her appearance just to state a fact, back then she had a tiny waist but always had big arms (obviously never lifted weights). I always thought that her look didn’t photograph well- there were certain promo shots where she looked bigger than she was due to the angle of her shoulders and arms.
Obviously she can sing, and I think a lot of us agree that Eponine was actually her best role. Everything else she has done has always just missed the mark. Her American accent is very Kermit- meaning that her voice in Addams and Heathers just sounded strange. I cannot imagine her as Truly at all! Admittedly I never really saw or heard her in War of the Worlds so I don’t have any opinion on that. I’ve always found her theatre journey a weird one. As a teenager on YouTube she got an agent at the age of 19 with an agent that didn’t actually have a theatre section at that point. Goes on 2 auditions - Mamma Mia, which she admits she wasn’t right for and then gets Les Mis. Her dream job pretty much straight away. Imposter syndrome settles in really quickly because she’s the only one that didn’t go to drama school, she starts vlogging at the theatre- CamMac realises that the videos are a goldmine, she’s already bringing in a younger audience and the behind the scenes videos are a hit. He then gets another member of the cast to YouTube more in depth behind the scenes videos (I discovered Zoe Doano’s videos recently and I actually prefer her videos to Carrie’s because they actually show the theatre- and she played Cosette at the same time Carrie was Eponine). I think if CamMac could have put the YouTube videos into Carrie’s contract initially he would have done- but at that time nobody knew how big it would’ve been.
My takeaway is that she was in fact stunt cast when she got Les Mis. After the first audition they would have googled her, found her YouTube channel and realised that she already had a fan base to bring people to the show. They also would have discovered pretty quickly who her brother was. Would they really have picked her over a drama school graduate without YouTube and the name? She got incredibly lucky I’ll give her that, but without YouTube and her brother I don’t think she would have landed Eponine.