Tony Nominee Q&A with David Hyde Pierce
By: BWW May. 29, 2007
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David Hyde Pierce, nominated as Best Leading Actor in a Musical's previous Broadway credits include Spamalot, The Heidi Chronicles, Beyond Therapy. Off-Broadway: originated roles in Jules Feiffer's Elliot Loves, Harry Kondoleon's Zero Positive, Mark O'Donnell's That's It, Folks!, Richard Greenberg's The Maderati and The Author's Voice; Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing at NY Shakespeare Festival; Peter Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard at BAM. Los Angeles: Center Theatre Group – Terrence McNally's It's Only a Play; Reprise – The Boys from Syracuse; Geffen - Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks with Uta Hagen; Actors' Gang - The Guys. Regional: various plays at the Guthrie, Goodman and Long Wharf Theatres. Film: Down with Love, Full Frontal, Wet, Hot, American Summer, A Bug's Life, Treasure Planet, Osmosis Jones, Wolf, Nixon, Sleepless in Seattle, Little Man Tate, Crossing Delancey. TV: "The Powers That Be," "The Outer Limits," "Titus," and "Frasier."
Congratulations on the Tony nominations for yourself and the show as a whole…
We're proud of the whole show and we would have been just as proud of the show without any nominations just by seeing how much fun audiences are having.
Everything came together and for this show and all of the odds were against it. And not just the terrible loss of Peter Stone and Freddie (Ebb), but the challenge of doing a murder mystery, and doing a musical and putting them together – that's just nuts.
Plus, it's a traditional musical…
Exactly, to do a more traditional kind of musical, nowadays is a hard sell on its own so we were so lucky because we got producers that looked at the show and once they did, they understood the sensibility and how the show should be and didn't want to mess it up. I think that it's a contemporary piece in the clothing of an old-fashioned show.
You look like you're having the time of your life up there…
I'm having a ball bringing the character to life, because honestly it's such a good fit because I'm playing a guy who has a job that he loves, but has always wanted to be in a Broadway musical, and has the luck to be on stage with all of these people that he so admires and gets swept up in this thing which is just what happened to me watching the show. It's a very nice synchronicity.
Certainly that's been the case both in this show and in Spamalot, which should be making you all the more comfortable on stage and even less of a "fish out of water…"
As an actor certainly… People know me from "Frasier" and that's fine for the name recognition and bringing people in to see the show which is great. But, I think that it also helps that they know me and know that this isn't my normal neighborhood, so they feel that both the actor and the character are having the same out of body experience in this show. And to get to work and to be on stage with these people is great.
Talk about the wonderful cast that surrounds you on stage…
The dancers and the rest of the cast are so talented. We've got people who have been around forever and others who are making their Broadway debuts. There's so many people that weren't born when I was doing "Fraiser" – which is so upsetting!
It's such a tight-looking cast as well that you can really see are behaving on stage as company…
They were all encouraged to be their own characters and not in an artsy way, but they've all developed wonderful character stories and histories. If you wanted to sit in the audience and just watch one ensemble member all night, then you would leave knowing their story. You would be able to say – oh!, he's in love with her and is sad about that. So through the prism of the show with such a strong story, it fits together.
How did you hear the nomination news?
I had just flown in from Washington, DC and had gotten off the plane and was checking messages on my cell phone in the parking lot of La Guardia airport, so I'll always have a soft spot for La Guardia. It's the best parking lot in the world!
Photo by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.
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