Hank Azaria
How does it feel for you and Jimmi Simpson to be carrying a big Broadway show?
It's a thrill. I can't say enough good stuff about Jimmi. I saw him do the play at La Jolla [Playhouse] and thought he was absolutely tremendous; my hope was that I could keep up with him. The play itself is a joy to do. It's such a railroad train—once it starts, you barely have time to think. You just do it.
[Director] Des McAnuff has given the production the same fast-moving feel as Jersey Boys.
Des has done such a deceptively brilliant job. The one thing I couldn't imagine when I read it was how it was going to be staged. He makes it look so easy and effortless, but there's tremendous thought and planning in what he pulls off.
Had you worked with Aaron Sorkin before?
Why were you drawn to the character of Sarnoff?
I went into the theater prepared to hate David Sarnoff, but I just couldn't.
So, make the case that Sarnoff didn't totally screw over Philo Farnsworth, the young guy who invented television.
You play him as an idealist.
What's fun about playing a master of the universe?
Well, you look very comfortable in a three-piece pinstripe suit.
Wow. What do you enjoy most about stage acting?
Do you mind doing a play that doesn't rely on your gift for comedy?
You finally made it to Broadway in Spamalot. What's your fondest memory of that production?
You mentioned The Simpsons. Can you sum up the enormous appeal of that show?
Do you feel that you and the other cast members get enough credit for the show's success?
Has The Simpsons given you financial freedom, or is that an overstatement?
When did you realize you had a gift for voices and dialects?
Tell me about your childhood in Queens.
Were your parents first-generation from Greece?
Did you learn to speak Greek?
It sounds like you were a good boy growing up—not the rebellious type.
Were you disappointed that Huff didn't run longer on Showtime?
Huff presented a really bleak view of marriage. Did that reflect how you wanted it to be portrayed?
Happiness on TV is hard to do.
The show didn't present a much rosier view of parenthood. Do you see fatherhood in your future?
See Hank Azaria in The Farnsworth Invention at the Music Box Theatre.
Absolutely. It's a sweeping historical drama, and where else but Broadway is right for something like that? I think it deserves a fancy stage. The challenge is humanizing it and finding the little moments that make it relatable.
I've known Aaron socially for many years. We were friends, but I had never worked with him; I don't know why. I feel blessed. I tell him all the time, "I'm so happy you wanted me to do this." I think he just thought I'd be right for it.
First of all, he's very funny and charming and smart. Second, in his own way, he's a genius. He's not only arguably the father of television, he's the world's first communications mogul. Everything we take for granted about what mass media is, he envisioned it and had the guts to see it through. That alone would be fascinating enough, but Aaron has written the guy with such humanity and such a self-reflective, philosophical way of looking at things, it was too delicious not to do. I would have taken a much lesser role just to speak Aaron's words.
Well, that's Aaron Sorkin. He got fascinated with this guy who, depending on what side you read about, is heralded as the father of television or, if you read a Farnsworth bio, is the devil. Aaron got fascinated with how complicated the actual story is and what an idealist Sarnoff was, even though he was pretty ruthless too.
It's actually an easy case to make. First of all, the truth is that it was the efforts of many, many men that made television happen. It really was! Farnsworth had a piece of it, but unto himself, he wouldn't have gotten there without the efforts of a lot of people—including Sarnoff, who created an environment in which other scientists could do what they did. Even if you made the argument that Farnsworth had [television] completely himself, it was Sarnoff's vision of what to do with it that was unique. Literally, he invented what we know today as television watching and television networks—for better or for worse.
Sarnoff had a utopian vision of what television could be. He fought very hard to keep commercials out of it, but in order to do that, he needed to control the patents. He worked for a long time not to cheapen it with advertising and then finally got backed into a corner [during the Depression]. But here's the real argument I'll make: Sarnoff didn't keep the billions he made for himself. He wasn't just a greedy mogul. He did have personal dreams of glory—he wanted to be remembered as the father of television. And in pursuing that, as we say in the play, the way he treated Farnsworth was not so kind. Farnsworth deserved better.
It's fun to imagine having that kind of power. He's a lot smarter than I am, so it's fun to pretend to be that smart [laughs]. And as an artist who works in television a lot, it's interesting to play guys who pull the strings and find out what makes them tick—and to see that they have as much passion for what they're doing as we do for what we're doing.
Thank you very much! That suit is made of cashmere and white mink. How about that? When I put it on, I said, "What is this material?"
It's my favorite thing to do, on many levels. First of all, it's an actors' medium. In film, it's the director and the editor who make their final cut, and pretty much the same in television. Onstage, it rests in your hands. You're driving. Each actor entering the play is a living, breathing character; every single one has a different personality. Especially in a play like this, it's a phenomenal experience to share that with 1,000 people every night.
No, I love it. And there's plenty of humor in this play. In fact, because the guy is so weighty, I've worked hard to find moments that make him funny and human. They had to pull me back off that a few times. For a comedian, anytime you find a way to get a laugh, you want to keep it, but there were two or three we let go in favor of a more weighty choice.
That actually came about because Matthew Perry is a very dear friend of mine, and he was set to do it and thought we would have fun together in London. I had been meaning to do a play for a long time. When I first came out of college, all I wanted to do was theater, but I couldn't get any jobs. The first two or three jobs I got were in television, including The Simpsons, so I stayed out in L.A. When you're 22 years old and they're going to give you 1,000 bucks a week? Back then they made a lot of pilots; not like now. Pretty much any actor worth his salt who went out to L.A. would get a pilot, which paid 25 grand.
Boy, that was the greatest experience of my life. Not just work experience—I still consider the cast family. We had so much fun. Monty Python was my favorite thing growing up, and I'd worked with Mike [Nichols] before [on The Birdcage] and loved him, so to be a part of that show, and to get to know Eric Idle, let alone work with him… It's very difficult to pick a specific thing. I'd say my fondest memory is just waiting for my first entrance in Chicago [during the out-of-town tryout], hearing the audience laugh for the first time and getting the feeling that this was going to work and be really funny. It actually kind of made me cry as I waited to go on. I'll never forget that.
That's tough. First, it's tremendous social satire; it's very, very smart. In many ways, it's like the uber-American comedy in that it encompasses everything that's come before in a way that is so intelligent. It's a combination of the minds of James L. Brooks, Matt Groening and Sam Simon, who are all geniuses in their own way, and somehow the sum of their sensibilities was greater than the parts. It's also one of those things that appeals to both kids and adults. The show's been on for 19 years, and I meet a lot of 30-year-olds who grew up watching it and laughed at it on one level, then became adults and realized a whole other level of humor. When I was growing up, Bugs Bunny and the Warner Brothers cartoons were that to me, so it means a lot to be part of something that makes a comedic impression on kids and then they realize later how smart the show was too.
I don't know. I'll settle for getting paid [laughs]. You know, animation voiceover is a mysterious thing. People aren't really aware of what goes into it. But, let's put it this way: For voiceover actors doing a cartoon, we're much heralded.
Oh no, no, it's an understatement! [Laughs.] Finally, after many years of doing it, they started paying us reflecting what the show has taken in, which we're very grateful for. It's been a tremendous boon. It enabled me to do projects I love, like The Farnsworth Invention.
I was always able to do it, and as a kid, I thought everybody could do it. I think it's literally a physical thing—I have plastic vocal cords that allow me to mimic sounds and voices very accurately.
I had a nice childhood—very typical. My dad worked in the garment center, which I'm walking through right now, and he did pretty well. We lived in Forest Hills, and I went to private schools and got a nice, creatively encouraging education. I never realized I wanted to be an actor until toward the end of high school and into college. I went to Tufts University, where Oliver Platt and a bunch of other terrific actors were classmates of mine, and we all did a lot of theater together. I figured I'd try acting until I was 25 and wouldn't get anywhere, and then I'd quit, but at least I could say I tried. I planned to go back to grad school in psychology, but I got lucky.
No, they were born here. My grandparents all came over from the same small town in Greece.
I did not. We're Sephardic Jews, and my family spoke Ladino, which was a strange, antiquated Spanish dialect written in Hebrew characters, in the same way that Yiddish is like German written in Hebrew characters. But they spoke a lot of languages. They spoke Greek; they spoke French; they spoke Yiddish.
No, I actually did [laughs]. I was smart enough to rebel under the radar, if that's not an oxymoron. I was clever enough to stay out of trouble, but I definitely had my moments.
I love to act. So whatever comes along, if I respond to the project or the role, I do it. I was always taught the "no small parts, only small actors" thing. But I have to say that as I get older, it takes more and more to get me off the bench. Also, I'm very keen to try anything, but then once I do it I'm not so keen to do it again unless I really loved it. But that said, I'm probably going to do a small part in Harold Ramis' next movie. I love Harold Ramis, it's a very funny film, so why not go and have fun for a few days?
Yes and no. On a purely lifestyle level, I was kind of relieved because it was a hard show to make. But I thought it was worthwhile and deserved better. But I tell you, once the people have spoken, it's hard to go against it. It wasn't highly rated, and you kind of get anxious to move on. That's one of the great things about being an actor—you get excited when you ask yourself, "What's the next thing?" Case in point, there's a chance I wouldn't have been able to do this play if Huff had still been going.
Yes. I was not long out of a divorce at that time [from actress Helen Hunt] and it certainly reflected some of my own feelings and experiences [laughs]. The fun of that show was exploring how everybody's an addict, everybody is a co-dependent, everybody has terrible fears and weaknesses. At the same time, everyone is a great hero for facing those things. That's where we were going. But it's funny that you say that—we started out on Huff attempting to portray a happy marriage and found that it was extraordinarily boring. So we started mixing it up a little bit.
It's very difficult. It's also not interesting. So yeah, it got a little dark there, but that wasn't so much me, that was the writer, Bob Lowry. He was a fascinating, dark character.
I really don't know. I'm 43 and haven't had a child yet. I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other about it. It's not like I'm dying to settle down and have kids; it's not like I'm trying to avoid it. I have no experience trying to raise a child. But I have a dog!