Rachel Potter Recalls Asking ‘Does Anybody Know My Line?’ Onstage During THE ADDAMS FAMILY
The actress remembered going to the ‘White Room of death’ when she was playing opposite Brooke Shields on Broadway.
Rachel Potter will never forget an onstage mishap at Broadway’s The Addams Family — even more than a decade later.
During the May 30 episode of the Playdate with Elle McLemore podcast, host Elle McLemore had Potter explain what she does if and when she forgets a line during a performance.
“Oh, I actually have a great story for this. I was in Addams Family,” the actress, who played Wednesday Addams during the musical’s final year on Broadway in 2011, began. “This one is like burned in the corners of my memory.”
Potter explained that she had “gone out with a guy” she really liked the night before on a Wednesday, and the two had quite a few drinks during their date and stayed out “too late.”
“I was following his lead, and he’s drinking like Red Bull vodkas. That was not my vibe,” she explained, adding that the next day she had a Thursday evening performance, but she was “barely making it through” by the time she was performing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
“I finally get to the end of the show,” Potter recalled. “We’re at the last scene, and I’m like, ‘Oh, thank God. It’s over. I’ve done it. I made it.’ And I walk up to Brooke Shields to say my final line, and I just enter the White Room of death — no idea what my line is. I’m just staring at her.”
At that moment, Potter recalled, Shields — who was playing her mother, Morticia Addams — was trying to coax the line out of her by giving the actress “hints and riddles.”
“Does it have anything to do with death?” Potter recalled Shields asking her in character.
“And I’m [thinking], ‘Well, probably, since this is The Addams Family!’” Potter said. “The entire Addams Family cast is on stage at this point in the show, so I just look at all of them, and I said, ‘Does anybody know my line?’”
Jackie Hoffman, who was playing Grandma, “whispers the line in my ear,” said Potter. “I just immediately spit it out, and then Brooke responds. And then we’re onto the next scene.”
However, things didn’t stop there. Potter forgot another line just before the show was about to end, leading her to “burst into tears” when the curtain came down.
Because Shields is such a big star, Potter said she would have famous friends in the audience all the time. At that performance was Matthew Broderick.
“I’m like, ‘Cool, cool, cool, cool. Matthew Broderick saw me do that,’” Potter remembered. “And he sees me crying, and he’s like, ‘Ah, kid. Don’t worry about it. There was one time I was in The Producers. I forgot my line so bad, they had to bring my script on stage.’ And I [thought]: That’s iconic. Thank you, Matthew Broderick. I feel better.”
The Addams Family opened on Broadway in April 2010 before playing its final performance on December 31, 2011. Potter made her Broadway debut in the production before she was cast in the 2012 revival of Evita.
Photo Credit: Walter McBride
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