Bradley Whitford
You got a standing ovation last night!
Ha, I know, isn't that nice?
What drew you to a 1960s sex farce?
Well…girls in miniskirts [laughs]. People always ask actors what draws you to a part, and what drew me to this was that it was being done. I read it and immediately went, "Oh my god, this would be so much fun to do." It's fantastic actors, it's a fantastic director. [Director] Matthew Warchus' interest in this was that it's a very well-made piece of writing, but also just profoundly silly.
Well, you're certainly working up there—you're running around and there's doors slamming and it can get crazy.
The whole cast seem to be having fun onstage, which we don't always see.
You and [co-star] Mark Rylance look like you're having a blast. How important is the chemistry in a play like this?
The ape was a nice touch.
How are audiences responding?
You've got some stellar women onstage with you. What's it like working with all that estrogen?
I'm sure you get this all the time, but how does your wife [actress Jane Kaczmarek] handle it when you're onstage with three beautiful women in miniskirts?
Things could be much worse, right?
Is your family still in California?
You and your wife both studied acting as undergraduates and then in prestigious graduate programs he at Wesleyan and Juilliard, she at Wisconsin and Yale. These days, lots of young actors just want to get out and get famous. Do you feel that the path of an actor has changed?
And that can undermine the work being done?
Speaking of young actors, what was Juilliard like for you?
There's this random fact that you met your wife on a blind date set up by actress Kate Burton—is that true?
How is it being in a showbiz marriage and trying to juggle two careers, three kids and marriage itself?
You made your Broadway debut in A Few Good Men. What was that experience like so early in your career?
You occasionally stepped in and did some writing for the show as well.
Have you thought about writing specifically for the stage?
You're very active regarding social change. What inspired the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation [a charity created by Whitford and his wife, which auctions celebrities' clothing for children's causes]?
So, with your "political" background, I have to ask—have you picked a candidate yet?
Who would have thought that high heels and airline uniforms could help inspire political choices?
See Bradley Whitford in Boeing-Boeing at the Longacre Theatre.
All the cliches are true: Life is short and comedy is hard. It's one of the most unnerving things to rehearse because you're so far out on a limb—which is one thing when you're in a beautifully redone theater [like the Longacre] full of laughing people, and a whole other thing when you're in a grim rehearsal room with people who've seen you do it a bunch of times. With a farce, there's a lot of math involved. There are things that have to happen at certain points, and that can leave you feeling like you're recovering from a stroke—which is basically how I look at every rehearsal process.
I don't want to sound pretentious, but there's a very interesting state of consciousness up there, because once the machine starts rolling, if one thing doesn't happen, then there's a whole bunch of stuff that has to happen that's never going to happen, and that's a bad thing. So it's an interesting state of exhilaration and fear [laughs]. It's sort of like life…
At the end of the day, it's an opportunity for non-pretentious fun and a really playful exchange with the audience, and I've really never had that with a play.
Well, Mark, as you know, is one of the great English actors—he ran the Globe Theatre! At one point in rehearsals, I just started laughing because he's standing there holding a [stewardess' purse] in front of his imaginary erection, and I said "Didn't you used to be the artistic director at the Globe?" Mark, having done the play before [in London's West End], and Matthew really trust this play. What's interesting is that for all its kitschy-ness and silliness, it is a bizarrely well-structured classical farce. Doors slam for a reason, there's an arch to everybody, there's a resolution to everybody. By the way, you shouldn't write any of this because then people won't want to come. Think chicks in miniskirts and ape imitations!
[Sarcastically] It's really subtle, isn't it? It's weird! Just doing previews you realize, "Oh my god. This stuff could really go far, couldn't it?"
I think they start off a little nervous, as you do with every play. And then they realize how generous the play is. It is, more than anything, a flat-out comedy. And those are really rare these days; often they're encumbered by introspection. We're encumbered by apes and sodomy.
It's…it's fantastic! They're all so….god, I become sub-verbal. When we started doing run throughs—you know, I kiss all these women and the lines are flying and you've got to keep it going—but anytime I got kissed, I'd go completely limp. It took me over a week just to function because when people start kissing me I stop caring about the play [laughs].
Boy…you'd have to ask her! The policy is, if you're shooting a scene where you know you have to kiss someone, you come home and say, "Oh, it was awful! I was so self-conscious, and all the tech people were there." So the [theater] version of that would be, "Oh, it's technical and sweaty and awful." That's what you say. But the truth is it's a blast!
Oh my god! You know, my kids—my 10-year-old, eight-year-old and five-year-old—are going to come to the show. It's bad enough that Daddy wears makeup. Now it'll be, "Why's he kissing everybody?"
They're on the west coast until school ends, and then they'll be here with me once the show opens. And I cannot wait for them to see this! Despite all the adult subject matter, strangely, a kid could see this show. And the physical comedy will be fun for them.
Yeah. I always find it odd that the word "acting" is used to describe what you do in a Shakespeare play and what you do on The West Wing. I haven't come up with a word yet that describes what's happening with me up there [onstage]. It's a totally different experience and that's really what you're looking for. Material like [Boeing] where it's just fun, with Matthew, who is so sharp and bright, and Mark, who is one of the great actors on the planet, is an incredible combination of aspiration and complete silliness.
I don't know exactly what it's like on the ground for actors in their twenties now, but it really is too bad. Meryl Streep came out of school and did Chekhov. Now she would be rushed into a television show or a film. I think there are a lot of great actors now who go do great regional work, but they get back to the city and have to start from square one again. There's no sense of development.
With West Wing, the press described it as if a bunch of TV actors just happened to be good in a group. They were good because they were all theater actors! I mean, when you take someone like Allison Janney and put her onstage for 10 years, you get Allison Janney! Young actors need experience acting onstage no matter what they want to do. I always tell young actors if you're good enough to have a career, you'll have a career; don't forgo getting experience acting in order to have a couple of quick jobs now.
I am incredibly grateful for it. It was tough; it was neurotic. There are certain things I would have changed about it, but the thing about these acting schools are they're sort of like therapy: It's not always so important who the therapist is, just go and see what your mouth says an hour a week. The funny thing about acting…if you want to be a trumpet player or an opera singer, there's a lot of set technique you have to master, you know? But when it comes to acting, there are maybe five [things] we all can agree on! So it's like teaching writing, where you really just need to get a lot of experience. My only criticism of the Juilliard experience is that I think they imagined learning acting was more sequential than it actually is. But I loved it.
Yes, yes it's true. Kate and I were doing Measure for Measure at Lincoln Center and her best friend was her roommate at Yale, who was Jane. Jane didn't want to go out with an actor and I didn't want to go out with an actress, which is good policy, but we went out. We were both from Wisconsin, strangely enough, and that was that.
I would hesitate to complain when good fortune overwhelms what difficulties we have. There is juggling, but our kids are thriving and they don't have any irony deficiencies or anything incurable like that. It's very hard for a lot of actors to give their kids the rhythm and stability that I grew up with. But, you know, its not like Daddy's a heroin addict—Dad's an actor! [Pause] And he wears makeup.
That was a very exciting thing because I was a schmuck actor and I got a small part and was able to understudy the larger part and then play the lead for a while. And for Aaron [Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and Studio 60] it was sort of the beginning of his writing. A peculiar spot came up where they thought the show was going to close. They had been bringing in —and it's funny, because I hated them—these fading television stars to play the lead. Now I am that schmuck!
It really changed everything. I was very lucky. Jane was lucky too [as the star of Malcolm in the Middle]. We had show runners who wrote for us. You're always bouncing around as an actor, and when someone gets you and wants to use you as a vehicle for what they're trying to do, it's a very interesting thing. It also happened to be about an arena [politics] that I've always been interested in, and it just so happened to coincide with me having babies and feeling very urgent about the future. So it was a dream job. And it was a great group of actors.
Yes, I wrote two episodes. It's something I work on every day—you know, I won't be able to do that ape forever.
Yeah, I have actually. I'm working on it. And once the show opens, I'll be able to work on it a little bit more.
Jane is really the agent behind that. It was in the wake of 9/11 and there was this ridiculous discussion about whether [the industry] should have awards shows, and there was an idea floating around that we should go ahead and have them. You know, you realize when you're in the public eye that you can raise money, and Jane and I were in this bewildered state where you're walking down a red carpet and people are asking you what you're wearing. We thought that was an opportunity [to use] the celebrity culture we seem to be in. The intention is to advocate for children using some of the ridiculousness that is show business.
Yeah. I've read Obama's books. I finished the second one and wrote him a check. But I've worked with Hillary for years and have a lot of admiration for her, so I support Hillary. My thing is, I want a woman! Maybe it had to do with me doing this play—there's one sex that created war and punk rock, and we've tried that. So let's try the other one now.
[Laughs] Yes, the nylons may have had something to do with it.