Donny Osmond
Why were you interested in making your return to Broadway in Beauty and the Beast?
I had loved the film since it opened in 1991, and then the stage show as well—and I'm not saying this just because here I am playing the role of Gaston. My involvement with this show began with my relationship with the folks at Disney, for whom I did [the 1998 animated feature] Mulan. Of course, it all goes way back before that; it's because of Disney that I am in show business. Walt basically discovered my brothers singing in Disneyland and then put us on his television shows.
So how did your casting as Gaston come about?
In this case, Disney approached me. I have known Tom Schumacher, head of Disney Theatricals, for a long time. He was talking about Gaston with the team that runs the show, and he said, "What about Donny Osmond?" They all agreed I probably wouldn't accept the role but called anyway and asked if I would be interested. I had always wanted to come back to Broadway because of the mishap that happened 22 years ago [with Little Johnny Jones]. Beauty and the Beast is the perfect way to come back: The pressure is not completely on my shoulders; I'm not the star and the show is already successful.
It sounds like you're really enjoying the Broadway experience this time around.
It's good that you can laugh about that experience now.
Have you kept up with the theater?
Parachuting into a long-running musical isn't always easy. What was the process with this show?
Gaston is supposed to have all these big muscles. Have you been working out?
The magic of theater, huh?
You did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for six years on the road. What drew you to that show?
Do you enjoy long runs?
Do you ever get bored playing the same part for so long?
Do your fans still scream and carry on like teenyboppers? Is that still exciting?
You are releasing DVDs of the Donny and Marie show from the 1970s. How did you select the material? Did you and your sister discuss the whole thing?
You had pretty much every big star on your show, at a time when it was expected that performers could do it all—act, sing a bit, dance some, get laughs. Maybe you didn't ask John Wayne to dance, but people like Bob Hope and Lucille Ball were expected to be versatile. Have things changed?
Theater actors, of course, still have to be multitalented.
So you're going to sing "I'm Still Here" on your next album, is that it?
Did you pick a new image, or did that just evolve?
Now you're promoting Beauty, chatting with the girls on The View, cooking with Martha Stewart and so on. Do you enjoy that?
You're working on a new album. Do you listen to contemporary music?
See Donny Osmond in Beauty and the Beast at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
I was more interested in Gaston. This is the role I want to play for the simple reason that it really goes against type. Early in the show, Gaston comes out with this big, toothy grin—it's type-casting for Donny Osmond [laughs]. But in the course of the show, he becomes this creep. The character goes on a journey from being sort of an amusing idiot to being the bad guy. In rehearsal, I had thought that if I do this right, people will applaud at the end when the bad guy dies. At the very first performance, I heard applause when I fell to my death. It was music to my ears.
My opening night was very exciting, very meaningful for me. Sitting in the dressing room were flowers and balloons and notes from well-wishers. One arrangement was the most significant and most important of all of them: It was from [producer] Jimmy Nederlander, who closed Little Johnny Jones. We're making arrangements to meet in the next couple of weeks. I told everyone, "Sure, I'll meet with him—just make sure I don't have a weapon on me." [Laughs]
You know, in hindsight, the closing of Little Johnny Jones was the best thing to happen to me. That was the very moment I realized that I had to reinvent myself. Losing that show lit a fire underneath me. When we were packing up to leave, we were all devastated, and I remember saying to my wife, "Someday I want to come back to New York and do it right." Beauty and the Beast is that vehicle.
Not too much. Setting aside the Joseph tour, I have concentrated on recording and television. Recording has been very important to me; in fact, I'm having recording equipment installed in my dressing room and converting it into a studio. Maybe we'll record my next album here at the Lunt-Fontanne.
It's Broadway by fire [laughs]. Once we signed, they gave me about 12 days to get everything together. I had other commitments, but I also had to memorize this role. Rehearsals of staging, dialogue and the songs all happened in 10 to 12 days. It's expensive to put somebody in a show, especially in a leading role, so things happen very quickly. But the cast and crew immediately made me feel like part of the family. Plus, it's great to have Sarah Uriarte Berry back in the show as Belle. Everybody's having a great time.
I have to. Thank goodness my costume helps. Trust me: Prosthetics are a good thing.
Wonderful, isn't it? But this is a very physical role, with stabbing and beating the Beast in addition to musical staging and all the rest. The fights are carefully choreographed, but they can be kind of dangerous, especially the fall at the end. It may not look that bad, but falling backward from that height the first time is scary. The choreography and the tavern scene with all that clinking of mugs are complicated. Beating up the Beast, the musical staging—it's a surprisingly physical role.
Well, when I started reading the script for Joseph, I did not want to do the show because the part was so much what people expected from me. I mean, Joseph makes his first entrance coming out of the clouds with a great big smile. As I continued reading, I realized that the character makes an interesting journey, though not as far of a stretch as Gaston. Joseph is sold into slavery, and eventually he's in charge of Egypt and you have to be convincing as a 40-year-old. Beauty and the Beast is more of a stretch—I have to be a creep.
Joseph was too long. I don't think I'll ever do one that long again. It wasn't really a tour per se, since the set was so huge that we had to sit down in one place for a long time. The shortest run was three or four weeks in Edmonton, Canada, and the typical run was three months in one place. We were in Chicago for 17 months.
I'm absolutely not going to pull punches here. There were nights when you have done the show a million times and you get to the theater and you are digging the bottom of the barrel.
I do, but I got sooo busted last night at Beauty and the Beast for interacting with the audience too much. Rob [Robert Jess Roth, the show's director] came back and said, "Never break the fourth wall." But it was too much fun. At my entrance, when Lefou says, "You're the best," I say, "I know." Well, the audience was having this huge reaction. As I walked down to the front of the stage, I motioned to the audience with that gesture for more applause, please. They loved it, and eventually they calmed down. I was hamming it up last night. But there's a difference between concert work and the theater.
In a concert atmosphere it's fun, but not in a musical like this. People respect the theater too much. Anyway, it's not like it used to be at my shows. The people who come are middle-aged women now. Things are calmer. It's quite interesting to see the demographic at my shows; there are the ones I call the "Puppy Lovers," who grew up with those songs, and there's a whole new generation that knows me from my recent recordings.
I own the show, so I did all the selection and I'm glad I ended up with that asset. The show-business legends that Marie and I worked with are amazing. I started editing a year ago, and cut each episode down from an hour to half an hour. There are DVDs for each year: '76, '77, '78 and '79. I stopped myself in the middle of the editing process when I realized I was taking out embarrassing things, the goofy stuff. Those moments are part of the charm of the show. There's a whole new audience for those shows, and it was fun to relive those memories from 30 years ago.
I hate to say it, but that is a dying art. There are a lot of one-trick ponies out there now. Stardom doesn't necessarily mean that you have talent. I was lucky to be able to get great training at a very young age. You know, I worked with Jack Benny when I was about seven or eight years old. Danny Thomas was another one we had on the show who could do it all. They came from the school of vaudeville where you had to be a bit of a song-and-dance man. Even Sinatra had to dance, sing, act. There are some instant stars now, and it's kind of embarrassing when they have to do a live show.
That's why theater will always command a certain respect, because you can't fake it. There are people who have multimillion-dollar recording contracts who can't sing a note. You fix it in the studio. If you tell those people, "Now, go do live theater," well, it's going to be pretty interesting.
No, but I'm enjoying what's happening now. Looking back to my teenage years, you can only imagine what it felt like to deal with the hysteria—the screaming girls in stadiums when you perform. Well, that dies off. The hype goes away. You have to rebuild. I'm enjoying my recent career much more than any career I've had previously.
I would never want to live my 20s again. It was a tough time for me. There were lots of dynamics going on with the world's expectations of me and my own expectations. Any time you change, you meet with resistance. The public and the music industry expected certain things of me. Turning both of those around was like stopping a train.
A little bit of both. One publicist said, "You gotta get busted for drugs. That'll change your image." Well, he became a former publicist. I tried a little too hard to change, but over time the real person emerged. It wasn't until I started working with Peter Gabriel that the music industry changed its perception, and I became hip by association. In the 1980s, I worked with Boy George; I did a Beck video that was played on MTV. Somebody remarked that the day you saw Donny Osmond on MTV was the day you'd see pigs fly. Well, guess what? They started flying that year.
It's hard, because you're pushing something, trying to convince people to come see a show or listen to an album. With Beauty and the Beast, I'm coming in with an advantage because the show is already successful. I saw Martin Short's show the other night, and Barbara Walters, whom I have known for years, was sitting right behind me. Martin pulled me up for that part of the show where he interacts with someone from the audience as Jiminy Glick. He was hilarious, and I was dishing it right back. We did that weird little Jiminy Glick dance together; it was so much fun. The audience was going crazy. When I sat back down, Barbara tapped me on the shoulder and said, "That was rehearsed, right?" I said, "No, baby, that was all improv."
I am iTuning all the time, always trying to keep up. In the last month or so, I have been researching who to get to produce my next record. Lately I've been writing and co-writing songs, but this next album is a fun one, just for me. I'll sing my favorite songs from the 1970s, but redo them the way I want to sing them now. Doing them the same way they were done in the past is a waste of time. I want to do things differently.