Jersey Boy Sebastian Arcelus Find Success (and Love) in Musicals

Sebastian Arcelus has taken a roundabout route to Broadway success. After growing up bilingual in a close-knit extended family on Long Island, he majored in political science at America’s top-ranked liberal arts college, Williams (alma mater of composers William Finn and Stephen Sondheim). Although he sang a bit, Arcelus never apprenticed at the famous Williamstown Theatre and took a finance job after graduation that could have led to a career in international business. Instead, he decided to give theater a try, and within three years landed the starring role of Roger in the Broadway production of Rent. Since then, Arcelus has changed his look (and hair length) to play a surfer in Good Vibrations and Fiyero in Wicked, where he met his wife of almost two years, 9 to 5 star Stephanie J. Block. In January 2008, he shed his ethereal curls to join the smash hit Jersey Boys as Four Seasons mastermind Bob Gaudio; a year later, he donned a pinstriped suit to play a hard-driving businessman in Susan Stroman’s chamber musical Happiness at Lincoln Center Theater. Unfortunately, most critics didn’t care for the show. Fortunately, Jersey Boys was eager to have him back. In a recent wide-ranging chat, the down-to-earth Arcelus talked about musicals, marriage and blending two busy stage careers.

How does it feel to be back in Jersey Boys after six months away?
It’s thrilling. It’s also a shock to the system. Even though I just finished doing [the new musical] Happiness a month ago, it felt like I had been sitting on my couch for six years and suddenly decided to get back into the business by jumping into Jersey Boys. That first time back on, it’s like being shot out of a cannon. Bob Gaudio’s section of the play coincides with the rise of the group; it’s so fast-paced and so exciting, you have to be on top of your game.

The real Bob Gaudio took to you immediately, right? He came to your opening when you assumed the role in January 2008.
He did, and he’s been lovely throughout the entire experience. He’s a quiet man, at least upon first meeting. [After opening] I said, “Do you have any thoughts?” and he said, “Yes. In general, don’t act.” He said it sort of in jest, but it’s actually an insightful piece of advice. I look at him as the soul of the group, the person who kept the machine going.

You kept your hair long for a lot of roles. What’s it been like to have a more strait-laced look?
[Laughs] The funny thing is, I had short hair my entire life. I started growing it longer when Michael Greif cast me in Rent, then I grew it really long for Good Vibrations to play the ultimate surfer dude. It became a little bit shorter with Wicked, and then with Jersey Boys, on day one, it was, “Let’s chop it all off.” I welcome the change, actually. As soon as I cut it off, I was like, “Now I feel more like a 1950s Jersey boy.” The past seven years have been slowly getting back to what I looked like in high school and college. I’ll tell you this: I need to get new headshots. It is definitely time!

You mentioned Happiness, a show with a fabulous cast [including Joanna Gleason, Hunter Foster and Ken Page] that critics, for the most part, dismissed. Were you shocked at the reviews?
I’d be lying if I didn’t say we were disappointed. Personally, I was saddened that it didn’t catch on with the critics. We were very proud of the piece. The creative team—[director] Susan Stroman, [librettist] John Weidman, [composers] Scott Frankel and Michael Korie—the most remarkable producers, Bernie [Gersten] and Andre [Bishop] at Lincoln Center Theater…it was a magical experience from start to finish.

Why do you think it didn’t do well?
It’s hard to say. It was episodic in nature, so you had to embrace each new section of the play with an open mind and heart, and perhaps that’s not to everyone’s taste. The majority of our audiences left the theater feeling like they had been through something special. It certainly made me stop and take stock of my life.

Did Happiness get recorded?
It hasn’t been recorded. We’re still crossing our fingers that it will. Michael and Scott’s work was so beautiful, so smart, so well written. They wrote many different styles of music. You had swing, you had contemporary music, you had the most intricate story songs. It was lyrical, it was rock ‘n’ roll; I think there will be more productions of the show as time goes on, and I do think that a recording would help that happen.

Let’s talk about your background. You come from a rather unconventional family, right?
I grew up in Port Washington on Long Island. My family was certainly unconventional. I’m a first generation American. My mother is Italian and Russian and a lot of other things, and my father is Uruguayan. In fact, my mother’s been married twice, and both men were Uruguayan. So I grew up in a very European/Latin American-influenced home.

Were you considered the cool family in town?
We were certainly the fun family in town [laughs]. As kids, most of my friends would have dinner about 5:30 or 6 o’clock and be done with their homework by 8, but we would have dinner at 8:30, 9 o’clock and I’d be up to 11:30, 12 o’clock. It was an unconventional lifestyle because in Uruguay, everything doesn’t start until 11. They have family barbeques where they cook what my dad calls “prehistoric food,” big slabs of meat. For what it’s worth, most of my friends would gravitate towards our home because it was so gregarious and loving and open. They would claim that they weren’t even coming to see me, they’d be coming to see Mama.

How many languages do you speak?
I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she’s pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do. I can fake Italian pretty well with my Spanish, but when I hear my mom or Mark Lotito over at Jersey Boys speak, they have a skill I don’t. But I do speak Spanish, which no one expects, based on appearances alone.

Not too many Broadway actors are also graduates of a college like Williams. How did you end up going there?
I don’t know how [college admission] would have gone now, but thankfully, at that stage, they were still taking well-rounded kids. There wasn’t one particular thing that I did exceedingly better than the next, but I played sports, I did theater, I was in the student government, I did well in school. I had my heart set on another college for a long time, but then I went to Williams and it was the most serene, awe-inspiring place.

What was the other college?
Princeton. I didn’t get accepted there, but after I got to meet the professors and students at Williams and had my interview, I absolutely knew it was the best choice. If you look at college as sort of a monastic experience where you’re living it and breathing it, being in a place like Williamstown, as far away as it is from the rest of the world, is remarkable. They were a great four years of my life that I carry with me everywhere.

You didn’t study theater, did you?
I majored in political science, and my concentration was U.S. involvement in Latin America in the 20th century. I was singing in a cappella groups, as cheesy as it sounds, always addressing my artistic needs, but I never let myself think of having a career in the theater. But before I knew it, I was actually more interested in studying the drama of politics more than the art of politics.

After graduation, you worked in finance for a while. What exactly did you do?
I worked at Salomon Smith Barney for about three years, more or less as a glorified assistant to people in international business. I got to do a little bit of consulting in Spanish. But mostly I looked at it as a day job while I was auditioning. I’d get up at 6 AM for work; I had a closet with, like, five different suits and eight audition outfits, and I’d pop out in the middle of the day to go to an audition. At night, I would do as much free theater as I could, whether it was in Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island, New Jersey. Finally I got my first gig in a regional theater, the first time I got paid to just do theater, and that was the beginning of the next stage of the career.

I have to ask, how did you and Stephanie Block fall in love?
Happily [laughs]. I’ll happily tell you, and we happily fell in love. We met doing the tour of Wicked. She had originated [Elphaba], and she was leaving the tour as I was coming in. We kept in touch, and after a few months I started flying into New York every Sunday night or Monday. I’d be in town for a couple of days and we’d have a date, then I would go back to wherever the show was. We started having this long-distance relationship that progressed very quickly. We were engaged not six months later and married a year after that. She’s the most remarkable person in my life, my saving grace, and we are so very happy.

You were both past 30 by the time you met. Was a desire to settle down part of the romance?
I think you’re ready to settle down when you meet that person; I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with age or circumstance. I had lost touch with the notion of just sort of “knowing,” and that changed when I met her. My whole life shifted. I knew that she was it.

How do the two of you avoid being competitive? She’s very well known in the theater.
Oh, sure. There’s no competition. I will always happily and openly support her in everything she does. First of all, we’re not going to be up for the same roles.

I mean as far as success goes.
Her successes are my successes, and vice versa. Look, I told her: I would, if I could, have a child so she can keep working, but it doesn’t work like that.

What a sweet thing to say.
She deserves the world. I think she’s the real talent of this relationship, and I love every facet of what she’s capable of. I went to see her in her one-woman show at Birdland for the release of her CD [This Place I Know] and she blew me away—and I live with her 24/7! She surprises me daily, so I can only imagine how she might affect an audience. She’s remarkable.

You, and especially Stephanie, have a lot of enthusiastic fans. What’s that like?
“Blockhead” is what most of her fans go by. They’re amazing people, and some have become dear friends. Again, just at [Block’s Birdland] concert, people were flying in not only from all over the country but some folks came from Europe. It’s a remarkable commitment. I don’t know where everyone gets the money to go to all these shows, because frankly, I don’t have the money to go to shows! We’re very thankful.

The musicals you’ve been in have helped feed the fan support.
Right. Especially with Stephanie, the characters she’s played have resonated with young women. Those characters have appealed to a strong sense of self and “girl power.”

Does it bother either of you to be thought of as a “theater couple”?
We don’t really look at it that way. We look at it as being blessed to be a part of the theater community and to be in each other’s lives. The important thing for us is to keep our work life and our home life as separate as possible—to get away when we can, or just shut everything off and sit on the couch and watch TV. We are a family now because we have a little four-pound pooch, the most amazing dog. [A baby] is something that’s happily on the horizon at some point. We embrace every moment of our lives here, but if we had to move to Wyoming tomorrow and write novels or work in a stationery store, as long as we had ourselves and the dog, I think we’d be real happy.

See Sebastian Arcelus in Jersey Boys at the August Wilson Theatre.