Jeffrey Carlson
With his chiseled good looks and classical training, Jeffrey Carlson has burst onto the New York theater circuit in a series of riveting performances that show off his range. And what a range it is. From the confusion of Billy, the son of a man in love with a goat, in Edward Albee's provocative The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? to the bitchy but fabulous drag diva Marilyn in Taboo, Carlson has captured a dedicated following of both industry insiders and casual theatergoers. He has also managed to keep his fans guessing with appearances in classics such as Tartuffe and Lorenzaccio as well as new plays like Last Easter. Now Carlson is appearing as Chris Ferrando in Paul Grellong's Manuscript opposite Marin Ireland and Pablo Schreiber. This time Carlson is clean cut and dashing as a tuxedoed rich kid with a secret in the calculating comedy about ambition and betrayal. He recently took some time out of his busy schedule to chat with Broadway.com via cell phone.
Manuscript looks like it's a lot of fun to work on. Is that the case?
Yes. I'm having a fantastic time. I've worked on this play a couple of years ago.
Right. You originated the role, didn't you? Tell me about how you got involved.
I got a phone call in--oh lord, 2003? It was after the Miracle Worker had closed, and I had spent some time in California. Anyway, I got a call that said the Cape Cod Theatre Project was going to workshop a new play by a young writer, Paul Grellong, with Rick Wasserman and Anna Paquin. We workshopped it for a week with Ethan McSweeny directing, and I had a fantastic time and loved the play. I found out later that Daryl Roth had optioned it and was looking to produce it eventually. Two years went by, and I was asked if I wanted to do it this summer. I said, "Sure."
What was your reaction when you first read the script back in 2003?
I thought it was very clever. I noticed that Paul Grellong created a really tight story about ambition and betrayal. There were no holes in it to me.
I've heard people compare it to Death Trap for one.
Oh, yeah. When I was reading it, the twists really kept me on my toes. I enjoyed it.
The night I saw it, the audience really reacted to the twists in the plot. Can you feel the reactions from the stage?
Yes, on most nights. The audiences are usually very responsive. Usually they don't see it coming, and it takes them completely by surprise, thank God. It's like a ripple of excitement. I've had friends that have come, and they have no idea about what's going to happen, especially the last twist.
You must be used to shocking audiences by now. The Goat certainly delivered some big surprises.
I can't compare the two shows except in the sense that you can feel the ripple of the audience, and you can feel that they are with you for all of that time and actually going there with you, which is very exciting.
Obviously, this is a hard play to talk about because you wouldn't want to disclose its secrets. How do you describe this play without giving away anything crucial?
It's very, very tough. I look to our director, Bob Balaban. [The cast] sort of steals from him and says it is a murder mystery without the murder, and the victim is a manuscript. It's sort of a nice way out of it. When he told us that I was like, "Oh, you clever man! Thank you for that."
Tell me about finding your way into this character.
I play someone who is relatively quiet for most of it. I think Chris gets to the point--I'm trying to figure out how to talk without giving it away. The challenge was how to make these boys human. They are in fact boys--they're young boys and have been friends with each other since the first grade. In fact, none of the three of them are redeemable characters in the end. You can look at it and go, "Yuck!" People try and compare it to other playwrights and plays where people are just awful to each other, and I'm like, "Well, I think these people are probably not really horrible people." They're just doing horrible things to each other.
What sort of research went into Manuscript? Did you discuss J.D. Salinger and Joyce Maynard, for example?
They definitely came up. [The literary character] William Alan Banks, I believe, is fictional. We did talk about what this writer may be and who these people may be to David [Schreiber's character]. We spent a lot of time talking about society and who these people are and films like Metropolitan. We wanted to give a sense of where they come from because they seem so much older than the average kid, but they grew up in a way of life that's different from a lot of people in this country. They are jaded. They feel as if they know something. She says, "We're old inside." That sense of self is identifiable and unique.
It's refreshing to see you play someone so straitlaced as Chris. Are you enjoying the leap away from the quirkiness of your recent roles?
Yes! I've played so many wild and eccentric people that it's nice to play one who was a bit more normal, though he's not exactly normal. And it's sort of unusual for me to be playing a straight person these days. [Laughs.]
Sure. It startles me when people seem to forget about how different all of the characters are that I've played. I mean, practically the only thing Billy [from The Goat] and Marilyn [from Taboo] had in common was sexual orientation. They are certainly not all the same. Billy was very different from Marilyn who was very different from Gash [from Last Easter]. The only things that Gash and Marilyn had in common were that they both liked to wear women's clothing, and they were both British, but I thought they were very, very different people.
Let's talk about Taboo for a minute. How did it feel to be in a show that garnered so much attention?
I have to say, it didn't come without its shock. It was my very first musical, and it was very tricky to be sort of abused unfairly by the press. Whether it was for bad timing for [producer] Rosie [O'Donnell] or whatever stigma was coming along with the play, I don't know. But it did sadden me because all I saw was this play with an incredible cast. We became very close as a result of the sort of beating that we took in the papers. Everyone pulled together. Three show had a lot of heart in it. We were frustrated every time we read what we supposedly did yesterday. A lot of it we were like, "That's not true! I was there!" It was confusing, and it saddened me, but it also provided a resilience amongst all of us and perseverance that we were not going to let this ship go down.
Taboo may have been a field day for the press, but it also won a dedicated following. What was your reaction to the Taboo-aholics?
I don't like to call it a cult following, but it was amazing to have people in the audience who saw 96 of the 113 performances that we did. That's something else! I think it's wonderful. People from all generations and all different kinds of people kept coming back over and over again--not because we were some failure to watch or some sinking ship--but because people genuinely saw the heart inside of it. They identified with the individuality of the characters and that world. It was about being an individual. It was about finding your place in this world, and I think a lot of people can identify with that. I thought that that message was so clear inside of it and yet the criticism came. People didn't understand that Leigh Bowery's story was different from [Boy] George's story and who these people were. I don't know. It was all very confusing to me. I was like, "What's there not to get?"
Despite the success of The Goat, you are most widely known for Taboo. How do you feel about that?
I was recognized for The Goat, but something happened that was very different in Taboo. I look more at it as a blessing than the funny little curse that comes along with it that now. No matter what I do--no matter where it is--people bring up Taboo. I just did a classical play down in Washington D.C., and every article mentioned that I played this big drag queen. But I've done lots of different things. Taboo was a fluke. I didn't know I'd end up in a musical. I wanted to do them, but I was trained as a classical actor. I promised that when I got out [of Juilliard], I would do everything, and no one was ever going to put me in a box.
I read that you studied animal science in college. How did you go from that to becoming an actor?
Yes, I studied animal science. I could have been a veterinarian. I wanted to be an actor when I was a little kid, and of course, just like any parent, my parents worried about the stability of this profession because it is not an easy one. It's a fun one but not an easy one to stay afloat in. So, my parents encouraged me to come back to planet Earth and choose another career. I love animals, and I didn't want to stay at home. I wanted to go away for school both for life experience and to just get out on my own. I went to U.C. Davis, which has one of the top vet schools in the country. I was pre-vet major there and worked with large animals for two years. My first year I was down playing the piano in one of the piano rooms in the dorms and this girl came in and asked if she could sit with me and I said sure.
A modest start.
Definitely. I was a chubby kid, and I was nervous. She started singing, and I sang along with her a little bit, and we became friends. She came over one day and said, "I signed you up to audition for the musical in the drama department."
Did you freak out?
I went along with it, but I had no idea how to audition. I went in big baggy jeans and a huge white sweatshirt that said U.C. Davis on it. I was this chubby kid with long hair and walked in and sang a capella this song from Chess. That was my first college show. It was My Fair Lady. I got in the ensemble. My mom was like, "No more!" She wanted me to go back to work and back to studying and the sciences and everything. I said, "OK." Then the next year the musical was South Pacific. I got into that as one of the soldiers. Then it was no more, back to your work, back to your studies. I did that and stopped into the theater department to get a soda one day because I thought the drama kids were cool. I was still really nervous. I was always very intimidated. Anyway, I walked in there and one of the teachers stopped me and was like, "Jeffrey!" I was like, "How does this person know my name?" He asked me why I wasn't doing more theater. I hemmed and hawed and said, "Well, I have a job, and I have to work on my sciences, and my parents don't think this is a good idea in order to have a stable life." By the end of that week he had sent me to the Dean of Letters and Sciences and to the head of the drama department, and they all said we think you can really do this, and if your heart is in it, we think you should give it a chance. I was very grateful that they recognized something raw inside of me.
First, they put me backstage on a couple of shows, and the next day I was given a job in the drama department, so I could quit my job at Petco. I didn't tell my parents. I started doing that and hanging out with more of the theater kids and getting myself involved--working not necessarily performing. That summer, I did my first straight play. I realized that maybe I could act.
Would it be a cheap shot if I asked you how your animal science experience jibed with your performance in the The Goat with its bestiality plotline?
It just provided for plenty of jokes amongst them. [Stars] Bill Pullman and Mercedes Ruehl knew that I worked at sheep barns and pig barns. They would be like, "So, what's it like?" And I would be like, "Oh please, it works like this." I knew all the mechanics.
With the press going crazy over Taboo and the misfortune of The Miracle Worker closing out of town, do you ever feel like tabloid fodder?
Oh my God. I do! The Miracle Worker was heartbreaking. We found out two days before we were supposed to come back to New York and start it. It was published in the press before we even found out. It was heartbreaking because I thought we had a really lovely show. My mom just thinks I'm cursed because I pick all these crazy projects. But Manuscript is buttoned up.