Video: Matthew Broderick Recalls PLAZA SUITE Apple Watch Mishap, Talks TARTUFFE Rehearsals
Tartuffe will begin performances at New York Theatre Workshop on November 28, 2025.
By: Josh Sharpe Nov. 13, 2025
After a storied career on the stage, an actor can be expected to have their fair share of onstage mishaps. Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick, now in rehearsals for the play Tartuffe, looked back on some of these during a recent visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers, including the time he blamed an audience member for his own technology.
During a pivotal scene in Broadway's Plaza Suite, he was sharing the stage with his co-star (and real-life wife) Sarah Jessica Parker, when he heard a voice. "Somebody's phone was talking. And we're trying to do a pretty serious scene, and I keep hearing it talk and talk, and I'm like, 'I'm going to tell somebody in the audience 'Turn that off.', They should know better," he recalled. "And Sarah was looking at my wrist... I had left my Apple Watch on, which was just blathering away."
He admitted that another common flub has to do with his costume pieces. "I often forget and have my glasses on. I very often have a very carefully planned costume, and then I just come out in my own glasses, which is worse if you're wearing transition lenses because the lights hit you and they become sunglasses [like] Jack Nicholson at a basketball game."
On Tartuffe rehearsals, Broderick joked that they are going "so-so," before clarifying that the show is exactly where it needs to be three weeks in. "It's week three of rehearsal, which is people trying to remember lines. We did a little run-through for designers the other day, and David Cross is in it, he explained. "I don't think he's done a regular play, at least not in a very long time. So we did it, and it went the way these things go, with concerned looks and us stumbling around. And afterwards he says, 'It is normal that it's that bad?' I said, 'Yeah, it's about right."
Directed by Obie Award winner and NYTW Usual Suspect Sarah Benson, Tartuffe will begin performances at New York Theatre Workshop on November 28, 2025, with opening night set for December 16. Previously set to close January 11, Tartuffe will now run through January 24, 2026.
Tartuffe is in our house. We’ve got to get him out. Tony Award nominee Lucas Hnath and Obie Award winner Sarah Benson conspire to bring us a razor-sharp reinvention of Molière’s iconoclastic comedy in a mad-dash production full of ferocious wit, outrageous design, and downright buffoonery. Choreography is by three-time Princess Grace Award winner Raja Feather Kelly.
The cast of Tartuffe will include Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick as Tartuffe, Emmy Award winner David Cross as Orgon, Obie Award winner Emily Davis as Mariane, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner Bianca Del Rio as Mme Pernelle, Tony Award nominee Amber Gray as Elmire, Obie Award winner Ryan J. Haddad as Damis, Tony Award winner Francis Jue as Cleante, Tony Award winner Lisa Kron as Dorine, and Emmy Award nominee Ikechukwu Ufomadu as Valére.
Joining the previously announced cast will be understudies Holiday (The Great Privation) for Valere/Damis/Cleante, Ean Sheehy (oh, Honey) for Tartuffe/Orgon, Courter Simmons (Waitress) for Dorine/Mme Pernelle, and Evelyn Spahr (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) for Elmire/Marianne.
Tartuffe will feature scenic design by the Tony Award-nominated design collective dots (Oh, Mary!), costume design by Tony Award nominee Enver Chakartash (I Love You So Much I Could Die), lighting design by Obie Award winner Stacey Derosier (Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole), sound design by Henry Hewes Award nominee Peter Mills Weiss (The Headlands), hair and wig design by Robert Pickens(Stereophonic), and makeup design by Katie Gell (Romeo + Juliet). Addison Hereen (Angry Alan) is the Properties Supervisor, and original music is by Heather Christian (Oratorio for Living Things). UnkleDave's Fight-House (Saturday Church) serves as Fight Director, with Crista Marie Jackson (Teeth) as Intimacy Director and Gigi Buffington (Good Night and Good Luck) as Voice and Speech Director. Casting is by Taylor Williams (John Proctor is the Villain). Kasson Marroquin (Wet Brain) serves as Production Stage Manager.
