Interview: Sean MacLaughlin On the Man Behind the Myth in TRULY, HOWARD HUGHES
The CHESS actor takes on Howard Hughes and discovers a story about ambition, love, loneliness, and the painful power of hindsight.
Howard Hughes spent much of his life looking forward. He built airplanes, made movies, amassed a fortune, and pursued ideas that frequently seemed to exist several steps ahead of everyone around him. In TRULY, HOWARD HUGHES, however, the famed aviator, filmmaker, businessman, and eventual recluse is finally forced to look backward.
For Sean MacLaughlin, who stars as Hughes in the new musical receiving its world premiere at The York Theatre, that distinction is everything. “This show is mostly about hindsight,” MacLaughlin says. “He had a vision, and he just kept going, and going, and going.”
Running September 9 through October 4 at The Theater at St. Jean’s, TRULY, HOWARD HUGHES approaches one of the 20th century’s most mythologized figures not as a conventional cradle-to-grave biography, but through Hughes’ memories as he revisits his life during his final moments.
“What we’re doing right now is looking at the hindsight of the mistakes that were made when it comes to interpersonal communication,” MacLaughlin explains. “It’s looking back on the relationships that he had and the works that he did to help move society forward. But the hindsight is where the heartbreak happens.”
MacLaughlin sees Hughes as a dreamer whose relentless pursuit of the next idea frequently left the people closest to him struggling to keep pace. “He moved ahead and people couldn’t understand his brain. They couldn’t understand his brilliance,” he states. “The brilliant part about the show I love is that the hindsight teaches the audience about what we all, in our own lives, need to think about when it comes to interpersonal relationships.”
That pursuit began early. Orphaned by 19, Hughes inherited considerable wealth but also, as MacLaughlin sees it, an enormous emotional void. “I believe what he actually searched for was greatness, not necessarily for himself, but for mankind,” MacLaughlin points out. “At the end of the day, he spent his life looking for greatness for someone else, to make someone feel proud of him.”
That realization has made finding the vulnerable man beneath Hughes’ larger-than-life reputation particularly affecting. “He was a Renaissance man, but he did not understand interpersonal relationships,” MacLaughlin adds. “Looking back, researching ,and seeing at least the heart of who Howard is, I think that he just needed a hug.”
Hughes’ ambition nevertheless transformed industries. MacLaughlin believes that ambition was rooted in genuine curiosity about the world and a desire to connect it. “He wanted to bridge that gap,” he explains. “Instead of being in a small town, instead of being in a small community, we can go out, and we can explore the world together.”
But TRULY, HOWARD HUGHES is equally interested in what that relentless forward momentum cost him. “How would you feel if you went and got all your dreams and had them all come true?” MacLaughlin asks. “What would happen when you’re sitting by yourself alone and no one’s there? You left everybody.”
The musical examines Hughes’ relationships with women including his first wife, Ella Botts Rice, and Katharine Hepburn. For a man convinced nearly every problem could be solved through ingenuity and determination, love presents something he cannot engineer. “When it comes to, ‘I can fix anything as Howard Hughes,’ he can’t fix anything when it comes to someone’s heart, their mind, or anything else like that,” MacLaughlin says.
That emotional journey has proven unexpectedly personal for the actor. “I have a hard time not crying through these songs because they’re so amazingly gorgeous,” he admits. “The hindsight and the singing of ‘What I Have to Do’ is just heartbreaking because it’s not about me, it’s about all of us.”
Photo by Shawn Salley.
After appearing in Broadway’s revival of CHESS, MacLaughlin is also relishing the intimacy of originating a role Off-Broadway. “I love a smaller space. I love feeling what the audience feels,” he says. “We’re creating theater, we’re doing something that is trying to say something, that is trying to tell people something, and create emotion. That is lovely, that is wonderful, and that is what we need in this world.”
However, originating Hughes comes with considerable pressure. “It is terrifying when it comes to performing a role no one else has performed before, and especially when it comes to a biographical role,” MacLaughlin reveals.
Rather than attempt an impersonation or recreate familiar depictions of Hughes, MacLaughlin hopes audiences recognize something of their own lives in his. “It’s not just about Howard Hughes,” he emphasizes. “You’re going to leave the show thinking, ‘Why didn’t I ask my girlfriend out instead of going out where I am right now 20 years ago?’ The hindsight is what makes this show so brilliant for me.”
Ultimately, TRULY, HOWARD HUGHES leaves audiences with a deceptively simple question. “Would you, if you could?”
MacLaughlin hopes they carry it home. “I really hope the audience focuses on the story, focuses on the bits, the clips of his life, what he did, and understands that it’s not just about seeing a show about Howard Hughes,” he says. “I want them to see a show that is introspective.”
TRULY, HOWARD HUGHES began performances on September 9 and is scheduled to run through October 4, 2026 at Off-Broadway’s The York Theatre at The Theater at St. Jean’s (150 East 76th Street, New York). Tickets and additional information are available at YorkTheatre.org.
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